


Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Legends

by AmoreCadenza



Category: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Genre: Action/Adventure, Friendship, Gen, Mystery, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26327542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmoreCadenza/pseuds/AmoreCadenza
Summary: The continent of Marnica is one of mystery and secrets, ones even the best exploration teams have struggled to find answers to. Together, two budding explorers — a Pikachu with no memories beyond a name and that he used to be a human, and a Fennekin hiding her past — find themselves in the center of the greatest mystery of all, and learn that the truth may not be what it is commonly believed to be.Not based on any existing Pokémon Mystery Dungeon content.
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1 — Awakening, Part 1

_**Chapter 1 — Awakening** _

Warm, sweet winds carrying the bright scents of late spring made their way lazily over the continent of Marnica, a gentle reminder of the long days yet to come. Accompanying the winds, the bright sun rose lazily in the east, setting the Pokémon of the land on their day.

As the bright rays first began hitting Marnica’s east coast, a lone Fennekin sat above a tall cliff overlooking the ocean, the tall grass gently swaying in the wind. Her stomach growled; despite the forest around her providing plentiful twigs and branches, both delicacies to a Fennekin, she longed for a true meal. Wincing, she attempted to block the sharp pains in her stomach out of her mind. Surely she did not have much further to go to find a town, correct? Pokéopolis was supposed to be just beyond the forest, although that had certainly proven itself easier said than done. Gingerly, she shifted her weight to avoid keeping too much pressure on the scrapes and bruises on her back legs from yesterday’s attempt through the forest. Or were those wounds from the day before? Regardless, they still stung.

“Maybe there’s another way around,” she mumbled to herself. With a deep breath, she stood up tall and puffed her chest out ever so slightly. “I’m sure there is! I just...haven’t found it yet, is all...yeah, that’s it! There’s always another way around something!” Just as she turned to move onward, a sharp barb flying right at her appeared in the corner of her eye, causing her to quickly and clumsily fall to the ground to avoid it. As it sailed over her head she flopped to the side, locking eyes with an Ekans that was glaring at her maliciously. It had launched a Poison Sting at her! “I’m just trying to pass through the forest!” she cried out. “I’m not trying to hurt any of you!”

“Invaders aren’t welcome in our forest!” it yelled back before launching another Poison Sting. A quick roll sent the barb right into the ground where she had previously been laying, and Fennekin rolled again, this time using the momentum to get on her feet and begin sprinting as fast as she could. She saw no more barbs coming her way, but for minutes she continued running, hoping to put as much distance between her and the Ekans as she could.

After what felt like hours but was surely only a few minutes, Fennekin slowed down and looked behind her. Nothing. Relieved, her legs collapsed and brought her to the ground before panting heavily. Maybe she could’ve defeated that Ekans, but she wasn’t sure that she wanted to risk it. Some of the Pokémon in the Misty Woods could be powerful, and she had been defeated by an Ekans a few times before. 

Although it took her as much strength as she could muster, she shakily got to her feet and began walking. Maybe there was another path on the other side of the forest that she could go through without running into any other Pokémon? She hadn’t checked there, so it was worth trying.

Now that she had time to get her bearings however, a yellow blob near the cliff stood out to her. It was moving ever so slightly like it was breathing, so it was definitely a Pokémon. She had never seen a Pokémon that looked quite that yellow inside the forest, so hopefully it wasn’t going to attack her? If it did attack her maybe she could fight back or run again, and if not, it could help her through the forest! It was worth the risk, she decided. 

As she slowly crept closer and closer as to not startle it, the yellow blob became more and more clear. It was a Pikachu, which she was sure she had never seen before in the forest. Maybe it was another Pokémon just trying to make its way through and got knocked out, just like her! When she got even closer, she broke out into a full-out sprint because the Pikachu was hanging over the cliff! While Fennekin was not the strongest Pokémon, she grabbed its foot and began pulling as hard as she could, slowly sliding the Pikachu across the ground.

“Aah!” it cried out, causing her to lose her footing and slip onto her back. When it saw her, it sat up and sighed deeply. “It’s just a Fennekin,” it moaned.

“Are you okay?” she asked. As she did, the Pikachu jumped in astonishment, causing her to instinctively run forward and grab its foot again to keep it from falling off the edge. “Why don’t you come away from the cliff?” she suggested.

“You can talk?” he asked as he twisted his foot away from her paws and scooted away from the edge of the cliff. 

“Of course I can talk,” she replied confusedly. “Why wouldn’t I be able to?”

“I’ve never met a Pokémon that can talk,” he replied. “Not to humans, at least. Seems like they can always talk to each other.”

Fennekin looked him up and down with confusion plastered all over her face, and the Pikachu could have sworn he even saw some unease in her eyes. “You’re a human?” she asked softly. “I’ve never met a human, sure, but you look just like a Pikachu.”

The Pikachu stared straight at Fennekin, then to himself. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. “Are you sure you used to be a human?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Just that, though. Well, and my name. But I don’t remember anything else, I don’t even know how I know I’m a human.”

“You remember your name?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” he nodded. “My name’s Ethan. Do you have a name?”

“I’m Fennekin,” she smiled slightly, but with no lack of warmth. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

Ethan sat there for a few moments, just staring at his yellow body. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything before you waking me up.”

“Do you know anything about Pokéopolis?” she asked. 

“No, I’ve never even heard of it. What is it?”

“It’s the city near here, and if there’s anybody who can help you, they’ll be there.” Silently, Fennekin turned her head to look back at the edge of the forest. “But to get there, you have to pass through Misty Forest. I’ve been trying to get through, but I haven’t been able to yet.”

“Why can’t you get through?” Ethan asked as he shakily stood up and took a few wobbly steps. “Do you keep getting lost?”

Fennekin shook her head, then stood up and walked next to him. “It’s a Mystery Dungeon.”

“Mystery Dungeon?” he echoed. “It looks like a forest, not a dungeon.”

“You haven’t heard of Mystery Dungeons?” she asked in shock. “Everybody’s been talking about them! They’re strange places where the layout constantly changes, and the Pokémon in there have gotten really territorial and attack anybody they see! It’s making a lot of Pokémon scared to leave their homes, and the ones that do run into so many problems that exploration teams are struggling to take care of all their requests!”

“Is there a way around?”

“We can try and go through it together!” Fennekin beamed. “I haven’t been able to find a way around yet, but with two of us, we should be able to get through with no problem! We’ll be in Pokéopolis in no time!”

“Go through? As in, have to battle Pokémon, and find our way through the forest?”

“We’ll probably have to battle while in there,” she confirmed. “We can try to sneak around any Pokémon we find, but I don’t think we’ll be able to get all the way through without getting into a battle. I’ve been able to get a little bit through, but without somebody else I’m just not strong enough. Now that there’s two of us though, we’ll be able to support each other and get through!”

“I don’t even know if I have moves,” he sheepishly admitted. “I don’t know if I’ve battled before, either. Humans don’t battle, do they?”

“All Pokémon have moves! And even if you can’t remember them, you can just do basic attacks! They’re great for when you don’t need all the power a move has, or when you want to save your energy. I’m sure that you’ll remember all of your moves, though!”

“I can try,” Ethan responded in an unsteady tone. “I guess I could at least keep watch for you, right? I’m sure Pokémon are everywhere in there.”

“I’d like that,” she responded, a small smile not lacking for warmth on her face. “With two of us, we can watch each other’s backs and keep each other safe. Are you feeling well enough to go in the forest?”

“I feel good.” Ethan stood up, then stretched his neck to the sides. “I think? I don’t know how a Pikachu is supposed to feel, but I think I’m fine.”

“You look okay to me,” Fennekin giggled. “Now come on, if we leave now, maybe we can get to Pokéopolis before sunset!”


	2. Chapter 1 — Awakening, Part 2

_ Misty Forest _

_ 1F _

As he and Fennekin stepped into the forest, Ethan felt a cool sensation on his skin, a stark change from the already-hot morning sun of outside. It was a welcome cool for sure, but such a change sent a quick shiver throughout his body. 

“Now you know why it’s called Misty Forest,” Fennekin giggled slightly, although not without a hint of nervousness. “It’s not very bad today, though. There have been some times where I come in here, and I can hardly see my paws in front of my face because the fog is so thick!” 

“I’m surprised the sun didn’t—” Ethan cut himself off as he turned back to where they had just been, only to find a thick wall of trees and undergrowth like the rest of the forest. “Where’d the entrance go?”

“It’s a mystery dungeon. Even the entrances and exits change, so we’re in here until we get through or get knocked out.” She motioned her head towards a small path out of the clearing they were in, then started walking towards it. 

“Knocked out?” Ethan echoed as he jogged to catch up to her and then walked by her side. “What happens then?”

“You wake up outside, perfectly healthy. If you’re carrying any money or items, though, then you lose some of them. But I don’t have any money or an adventuring bag, so just what I can carry.” When they got to the narrow path out of the clearing, Fennekin stepped aside and gestured a paw down it. “You first.”

“Me? You know this forest better than I do, you should go first!”

“I’ll be right here,” Fennekin responded gently with a loving smile. “If we get attacked and you’re getting overwhelmed, just switch places with me. That’s why it’s great to have team members to fight along with you! I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

Ethan took a deep breath in, then coughed as he let it out much quicker than he had anticipated. “Okay,” he continued coughing, “I’m ready.” Head high, he walked in front of Fennekin and began down the path. After taking a few steps, he turned his head back and was met with a small smile on her face.

“I’m still here.”

“Yeah.” He laughed nervously, then looked back forward. “Just making sure.”

After a few more steps in silence, Ethan stepped out into a small clearing, a small ramp of roots and vines in the corner seemingly leading up into the trees. “What’s that?” Ethan asked, pointing towards it.

“Those are the stairs!” Fennekin beamed. “Mystery dungeons have different levels, and you just have to find the way to the next one. Eventually, you get to the end of the dungeon and exit on the other side. Now come on, let’s go!”

_ Misty Forest  _

_ 2F _

“How do we know when we’re getting close?” Ethan confirmed as he took the final step up to the next level of Misty Forest. Looking around, he saw they were in a large room with two exits, one straight in front of them and another to his left. 

“It’s always the same amount of floors,” Fennekin replied as she walked up next to him, “but if you don’t know that, then there’s no telling. The floors just keep going, and sometimes the plants or rocks or Pokémon change, but you can’t see the exit.”

“Where do you think we should go?” he asked, looking around the room. “Is there a good way to tell where to go?”

“Pick a direction and go! That’s part of the fun of exploring, you never know what you’re going to find!”

“Let’s go forward,” Ethan proclaimed, his voice unsteady. “I guess we just have to wander around until we find the stairs, so either works for me.”

“Think of it as going on an adventure,” she laughed. “That’s how I always viewed getting lost or just wandering around. It makes it so much more fun!”

“I guess,” he laughed back. As he walked into the narrow path between the trees, a flash of brown swooped down from the trees and landed right into his chest, stopping him in his tracks and knocking the wind out of him.

“It’s a Hoothoot!” he heard Fennekin yell behind him. “Attack it!”

Instinctively, Ethan reached out with his hand and hit the Pokémon, causing a few loose feathers to fly up. “Use your electric attacks!” Fennekin yelled again as the Hoothoot lunged out with its beak. Quickly, Ethan took a few clumsy steps to the side, narrowly avoiding the beak. Did he have electric attacks? Somehow, he knew how to charge his cheeks nearly to the point of feeling like bursting, then shot them out and landed the bolt squarely on the Hoothoot’s body. Before he could act, the other Pokémon turned around and hopped a few feet away and flew back into the trees. 

“Was that just a battle?” Ethan panted between big breaths, trying to get his breathing back to normal. After a few seconds, he began trudging back forward through the path.

“You did great! And see, I told you you had electric attacks!”

“Why electric attacks? Are those the only types of moves I have since I’m a Pikachu?” 

“Every type of move has its strengths and weaknesses against certain Pokémon.” Judging by the way Fennekin tilted her chin up into the air and the very pointed way she spoke, she was quoting something by heart. “Additionally, every Pokémon has one to two types, and using moves of their own type strengthens their power.”

“You must be a really good explorer if you know all of that. I think I’d have trouble keeping track of what moves are effective against what Pokémon.” He emerged into a small clearing upon finishing speaking, with one exit to his left. “I guess we’re going that way.”

Ethan heard a nervous giggle and a cleared throat behind him as he walked towards the small path leading out of the clearing. “I’m not actually that good of an explorer. I’m...not even really an explorer, I guess. I’ve read a lot of books and stories about explorers, though!”

Not even knowing how to respond, Ethan and Fennekin walked forward in silence, the only sound the crunching of leaves and snapping of twigs below their feet. Not an explorer? She seemed to know what she was talking about, but he supposed that it would explain why she hadn’t managed to get through the forest. Why was she trying to get through, though? If Pokéopolis was the only city around but she was on this side of the forest, that meant she was from somewhere else.

“There’s the stairs!” Fennekin exclaimed as they walked into another small clearing before Ethan could ask any further questions. 

_ Misty Forest _

_ 3F _

“Are you also on your way to Pokéopolis?” Ethan asked as he took the final step up to the next floor of the dungeon. The clearing they entered into was large and long, one path leading out to their left and two close together on the far end. 

“That’s right!” Fennekin confirmed as she bounced up the stairs and next to him. Once he started walking towards the two exits at the far end, she fell in behind him. “I’ve always wanted to join the Adventuring Academy, and that’s where it is! You don’t have to go there to become a part of the Exploration Society of course, but they teach you everything you ever need to know about being an Exploration Team. Some of the best explorers in the world teach there, and they work very closely with the Exploration Society so it’s a lot easier to start than if you don’t go to the Academy.”

As Ethan walked into the small path leading out of the clearing, he saw another small path breaking off to the right, although a quick look down it showed that it just doubled back into the same room. Exploration Society? Exploration Team? It seemed very formal for exploring, but maybe there was a lot more to it than just going somewhere and seeing what you could find.

After a few moments of walking, they emerged into a small clearing with only one exit on the left. As he started walking towards it, Fennekin grabbed his tail and held him back. “An oran berry!” she exclaimed. 

“A what?” He looked back at her, and then at the round blue lump in the middle of the room she was pointing at. It definitely looked like a berry, he supposed, but had no clue what an oran berry was supposed to be. 

“An oran berry,” she repeated, walking up to it and putting a paw on it. “If you get hurt, you can eat one and you’ll instantly feel better! We don’t have a bag to put it in, but you should be able to carry one while we explore.”

“Just carry it?” he confirmed as he walked up and picked the berry up off the ground. It was hard, remarkably so, like holding a rock. This was edible? He imagined that someone would break a tooth trying to eat one raw, which seemed the last thing you’d want when injured. 

“An item like that, yes,” she nodded, putting her paw back down on the ground. “You can carry or wear an item, and if you have an explorer’s bag, you can store anything else in there. You might need that berry if we get into more fights!”

Ethan laughed slightly as he turned around and walked down the small path leading out of the room. “I hope not, we beat that Hoothoot but I don’t want to think about what else could be in here.”

“You get stronger from battling other Pokémon though, so you don’t want to not see any Pokémon! You just have to hope that you don’t see too many at once.”

As they neared the exit of the clearing, Ethan caught the glimpse of some shape moving through the grass. “It’s an Ekans!” Fennekin cried out before he could react. “Get close and attack it!”

More confident than the last time, Ethan walked a few steps closer to what he could now see was a long, purple snake-like creature. As it popped its head out of the grass he used Thundershock, hitting it squarely in its face. More energy began piling in his cheeks as he began to charge up another attack, but before it could go off he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest. The electricity jumped out of him as he fell to his knees in pain, but the Ekans deftly lurched to the side and avoided the bolt. 

“It hit you with a Poison Sting!” Even though in reality little was happening around them, adrenaline pumped through Ethan’s body and nearly drowned out the sound of Fennekin’s voice. Poison didn’t sound good, so he had to act quickly. His head suddenly got hot, as if fire were thrown over it. He went to hit the Ekans with a basic attack but swayed in dizziness; may as well use the momentum, he supposed, so he pushed himself off one of his feet and slammed into it. As he got back onto his feet, he saw the Ekans slithering away across the ground.

“It looks like it poisoned you,” Fennekin said as he pulled the barb out of his skin and threw it off to the side. “Good thing you have the oran berry, then.”

Ethan took a few deep breaths in; his body, while not feeling perfect, was passable. A few steps towards the path on his left proved him wrong, however. Sharp pain coursed all throughout his body, sending him to his knees and making his teeth clench so hard they felt at the verge of shattering. 

Fennekin laughed shakily, as if unsure that that was the correct response, as she walked up and rubbed his back. “That would be the poison. It’ll continue hurting you, but by the time we get to the next floor it should wear off. If you feel like you can’t make it, eat that oran berry.”

“I feel okay,” Ethan grunted as he got to his feet. “I think it’ll depend on where the stairs are.”

“Hopefully they aren’t too far. I think that the next room ahead could be where the stairs are! Remember, if you feel like you’re going to faint in a battle, just step back and let me take over. There’s no reason to take all of the hits if you can’t!”

Step by step, Ethan walked out of the clearing and into the path, eyes darting around the entire time to notice anything that could be an approaching Pokémon. Hopefully Fennekin was keeping her eyes open, for the longer the trudge went on, the blurrier and more unfocused his vision became. Maybe that was what fainting felt like? He sure felt like he was getting closer and closer to falling down. 

“Ethan!” Fennekin snapped, lightly grabbing and yanking his tail. He spun around, but before being able to ask anything, the sight of the mossy, vine-covered stairs floated in and then out of the hazy tube his sight was gradually narrowing down to. 

_ Misty Forest _

_ 4F _

Sharp pains went through Ethan’s chest with every labored breath he took. “How do I know if poison has worn off?” he barely managed to wheeze out as Fennekin ascended the stairs after him. 

“Hopefully it will have worn off by now. Poison also stops you from recovering from your injuries, so if you start feeling better, you’ll know that you’re good!” Ethan looked down at the berry in his hands, then brought his head back up and looked around. The clearing looked free of Pokémon, a medium-sized area with an exit in front of them and one to the left. Something in his gut told him to go straight forward, so Ethan walked on ahead.

“Ekans!” Fennekin cried out after only a few steps. After a quick turn of his head and a scan of the room, he saw what she was talking about; just like before, there was a long figure slithering through the grass towards them. Perhaps they could fight it, he thought, but it was better to not risk it. 

“Let’s just get out!” he ordered, already taking a few steps towards the exit he had decided upon. Once he turned his head however, he was met with a similar rustling of grass coming straight towards them from the exit, this time caused by a small yellow creature with sharp fangs and seemingly wrapped in leaves. 

“And a Sewaddle! We’re going to need to position ourselves so we can both fight. I can take the Sewaddle on, you focus on the Ekans!”

Ethan couldn’t even remember processing a decision, but quickly moved around Fennekin to place her closer to the Sewaddle and have them both next to the Ekans when it would come up to them. He took a bite of his berry as he did so, hearing something between a crunch and a snap as the hard skin broke open to reveal slightly more tender flesh that tasted...well, like nothing, if he was being honest. Still, something about the flesh and juice of the berry made him feel more alert and take some of the pain away, so bracing himself for a battle and bringing electricity to his cheeks was significantly easier than he had figured it would have been if not.

“Use your Quick Attack!” Fennekin yelled when the Ekans got a few feet away from him. “It’s what you used to finish the last one off!” Was that right? It was worth a shot, at least. Trying to remember how he defeated the previous Ekans, he almost lept off of his feet and broke out in a full sprint towards the Pokémon before slamming into it. Before it could react, he ran back next to Fennekin.

“Like that?” he asked, the abrupt stop in his momentum causing his feet to sink into the damp ground slightly. 

“Yeah!” A noise akin to something snapping or crackling came from the direction Fennekin was in, and when he turned his head slightly to look in his peripherals, he could almost swear that her ears were glowing bright red. Everything felt warmer, too. The crackling turned into a short flare-up like dry kindling suddenly catching on fire, and a small burst of flame seemed to come out of her mouth. Wherever it came from, it hit the Sewaddle dead on, causing it to cry out in pain and retreat back into the forest. 

Stabbing pain in his arm brought Ethan back to the reality of his situation as the Ekans sank its teeth into his skin. Quickly deciding, he filled his cheeks back up with electricity and used Thundershock, taking advantage of the fact that the other Pokémon seemed intent on keeping its hold on him. As he prepared for another attack, it released its tight hold on him and quickly went back into the forest.

“What was that you did?” he asked while examining his arm. It hurt, but with time it would recover. It did not look to be any sort of wound to worry about. 

“I’m a fire-type,” she explained, “so I used Ember. And Sewaddle is weak to fire-types, which is why I said to let me handle it.”

“That went a bit better than the last fight,” he laughed. “You seemed really strong. How come you haven’t made it through this forest before?”

A small smile grew on her face, but behind it Ethan could sense the nervousness she still held. “Not every Pokémon is weak to fire moves. And I don’t know many other moves, so I just had to rely on those or basic attacks. It’s a lot harder when you don’t have anybody else with you.”

“It is kinda nice that I just had to focus on that Ekans,” he began as he moved past Fennekin to start leaving the clearing. “I don’t know how powerful a Sewaddle is, but two Pokémon at once seems difficult.”

“Two Pokémon at once is usually why I faint and can’t get through,” she admitted, following him out. “There’s only so much you can do. Maybe if I had a bag to hold some more useful items, but since I don’t I just have to rely on what I can carry.”

That made sense, he supposed. He hoped that he would find another berry sometime soon, or they were getting close to the exit. Only having to fight another Sewaddle would also be fine, since it seemed like Fennekin had that down. Or a Hoothoot, maybe? Definitely not another Ekans, not after last time. 

When they emerged from the path into another small clearing, Ethan smiled upon seeing the stairs right in front of them on the right wall. That seemed easy enough.

_ Misty Forest Clearing _

“I’ve never been this far into the forest,” Fennekin thought aloud as they walked into a large, wide open space, much less densely forested than anywhere else they had seen thus far. “I bet we’re almost outside!”

“I think I can see light up ahead!” Ethan cried out. Excitedly he walked forward a few steps, then felt himself brought to the ground. His immediate reaction was to prepare a Thundershock, but when he saw one of Fennekin’s paws enter his field of vision from above, he brought it back inside of him. She was on top of him? What was going on?

“Ambush!” The worry in her voice was clear as she rolled off of him and onto her own feet. Quickly getting up himself, he noticed a pile of fruity mush where he was once standing. Was that an apple? He had never been in an ambush, but he figured that fruit was not a common weapon for it.

“Aipom!” another voice called out from somewhere in the trees. “I told you not to do that, now they know we’re here!”

“It was your idea!” another voice yelled back. “You said we should wait in the trees to battle them.”

“But I didn’t say to throw an apple at them the second we saw them!” The two shouts were coming from a similar area, causing Ethan to look at where they seemed to originate from. Judging from the tone and the mere fact that they were yelling while right near each other, it seemed likely whoever was in the trees was not the most coordinated group out there.

Just as his eyes went to where he thought the voices were coming from, a small purple Pokémon, long tail ending in a large hand, dropped out of the tree. “Aipom!” the feminine voice cried out as it hit the ground. “Why did you go down, now they know where you are!”

“Come on, Emolga! They already know we’re here, and your yelling has totally told them where we are.” If the one in the trees was Emolga, that must make the one on the ground Aipom. 

“My yelling?” the one named Emolga, a small black and white Pokémon with yellow cheeks and what appeared to be some sort of cape or glider, gently jumped out of the trees, spreading her arms wide near the ground to land gracefully on her feet. “You’re the one who threw the apple at them and then started yelling back at me!”

Ethan felt Fennekin lightly nudge his elbow, then speak in hushed tones between gritted teeth. “They certainly are characters, aren’t they?”

“I heard that!” Emolga yelled back at them. “You’re about to find out why you never mess with members of the Adventuring Academy!”

“Adventuring Academy?” Fennekin yelped, her voice cracking slightly at the start. “Wait, there’s been a misunderstanding!”

Fennekin’s only response was Aipom deftly tossing another apple out of their bag into the air, then twirling around and grabbing it in his tail before finishing the spin and launching it straight towards her. She managed to sidestep the incoming fruit, causing it to land hard on the ground and splatter mush everywhere. “We’re going to have to battle them,” Ethan said to her as she regained her footing back where she had been. Seeing Emolga rushing towards him, he leapt out and hit her with Quick Attack before rushing back. Fennekin turned towards Aipom and closed in on him, soon coming face to face. 

Just as Ethan landed back in place after his attack, he felt something slam into him but saw nothing except a smugly-grinning Emolga. She knew Quick Attack, too! He decided that he would need to get closer; he didn’t think Thundershock could reach that far, and Fennekin being surrounded by both of them was worrying. That might let one or both of the other Pokémon attack him, but if he didn’t move then he might be dooming Fennekin to take both hits.

As he walked towards the fight, he braced himself for a hit. Heat flaring up to his right signified that Fennekin was using Ember, and if that did not, the cry of pain from Aipom did. “She burned me!” he cried out.

“Just keep fighting!” Emolga scoffed, turning to face Fennekin. Her cheeks sparked with electricity, but instead of shooting it out, she grabbed one of Fennekin’s legs and clenched it tightly before shoving her face into it. 

“She used Nuzzle, I’m paralyzed!” Fennekin barely managed to grunt out before Aipom hit her with a basic attack. Which was more important to attack first, Emolga who could paralyze, whatever that meant, or Aipom who was already hurt and still had smoke rising off of his body? He was already facing Aipom and needed to make a decision, so he called electricity of his own to his cheeks and zapped him with a Thundershock. It must have been enough, because after being hit square in his chest, Aipom fell to the ground. 

In his focus on Aipom, Ethan felt Emolga grab his arm and bury her face in it, but unlike Fennekin, he only felt a small tingling sensation and didn’t seem to be affected by the paralysis. “You’re an electric type, of course!” she growled. Taking advantage of her right there, he performed a basic attack and startled her enough to make her let go of him, but not enough to prevent her from making another basic attack of her own. 

Ethan shot out electricity in another Thundershock, but Emolga only grinned and hopped back and forth on her feet before slamming into him and hitting him with a basic attack seemingly at the same time. Did she get faster? He could have sworn that she did, maybe it was the Thundershock. She didn’t seem to take any damage from it unlike everything else he attacked with it. Just to play it safe, he sprang off of his feet and into her with Quick Attack and felt a ball of heat narrowly avoid him as Fennekin recovered from her paralysis and hit her with Ember.

When he landed back on his feet where he had been, he watched Emolga drop to one knee, face contorted in barely-contained pain. “We have to get out of here, Aipom!” she yelled.

“Wait!” Fennekin screamed as Aipom rolled over and shakily got to his feet. “You misunderstand, we’re not from here, we’re trying to get to Pokéopolis! We’re trying to get to the Adventuring Academy!” 

“You’re what?” she responded after a few seconds of staring at the two of them in disbelief. “Why did you attack us, then?”

“Hey, you attacked us first!” Fennekin defended. “But we don’t want to hurt you, we just want to get to the Academy.”

“Aipom attacked you first,” Emolga corrected. 

“Emolga told me to,” Aipom responded in a tone identical to hers.

“Regardless,” Emolga sighed, anger clear in her breath, “if you’re trying to get to the Academy, we can bring you there. Beating us probably means you’re good enough to be accepted, I suppose, but that’s not our decision.”

“Luxio is going to be real mad when she hears we got beat by two new recruits,” Aipom muttered. “She’ll probably make us spend the whole week battling just to make up for it!”

“Maybe some training will serve you well. We’re in no shape to go on, so we may as well bring these two back with us. Now come on you two, the exit is right over there.”


	3. Chapter 2 — Pokéopolis, Part 1

**_Chapter 2 — Pokéopolis_ **

“So what are your names?” Emolga asked as they walked out of the Misty Forest. Bright sun pounded down on the party, causing Ethan to put a hand over his eyes so they wouldn’t get fried. He hadn’t realized how dark and cool it was in the forest until now, where the sun was high in a cloudless sky and baking the earth below. It was warm, not hot, but it was still uncomfortable after the forest.

“I’m Fennekin, and this is Ethan. You two are Aipom and Emolga?”

“Ethan,” Emolga repeated slowly, as if testing the name out. “That’s a weird name for a Pikachu. But yes, I’m Emolga and that’s Aipom. We’re scouts at the Adventuring Academy.”

“That’s so cool!” Fennekin beamed. “What’s the Academy like? Have you gone on a lot of adventures? How is being a scout different than being an explorer?”

“They’ll be able to answer all those questions at the Academy,” she said in a sigh. Whether it was out of exhaustion from the battle or from Fennekin’s questions Ethan wasn’t sure, but he figured it best to not ask. She already seemed angry at Aipom, no reason to get her angry at him, too. 

Aipom, on the other hand, turned around and began bouncing on his tail while moving backwards. “Being at the Academy is awesome!” How he wasn’t falling down, Ethan had no idea. “We’ve been to some really cool places, and we keep looking for more! Unlike explorers who go into the Mystery Dungeons and look for treasure inside, we as scouts are the ones that go find new places that we think have treasure. Then, we come back and share what we’ve found, and everybody else can go inside and explore!”

“You just find the places?” Fennekin asked with a tilt of her head. “You don’t want to go inside and explore them?”

“We explore them sometimes.” As they started down a hill, Aipom quickly turned in between hops and settled back on his feet. “We can’t let everybody else have the treasure, you know? Plus, we need to make sure there actually is treasure somewhere and it’s not just a bust.”

“Where were you going?”

“We were actually going to investigate the forest,” Emolga spoke up, sounding almost confused at her own answer. “Mystery Dungeons have been popping up everywhere, but there’s never been this one so close to Pokéoplois. We were wondering if there was something special about the forest that might cause it to change, or if there was something that showed up that could cause it. Everybody in town is getting really worried because of how close these are getting.”

“They’re moving? Where did they start from?”

“Not here,” Aipom shrugged. “Somewhere out to the west, but we’re not sure where the first one was. By the time word came here, there were already dozens and dozens. It’s pretty much everything anyone can talk about.”

As the party continued their way along the packed dirt path, Ethan’s attention floated in and out of the conversation as Fennekin asked Emolga and Aipom a plethora of questions about things he had never even heard of. Exploration badges? Ranking up? For someone who claimed to not be an explorer, she seemed to know a lot about it. She was probably trying to join the Academy and was studying up on it. Wait, was there an entrance exam or something? There must be if she knew that much. Right?

The sun got higher and higher as the trek went on, and before it had even reached its highest point in the sky, the day tipped from warm to downright hot. Fennekin seemed to enjoy it, but she was alone in that regard. Just when the heat and pounding sunlight seemed to become downright oppressive, the group crested a large hill, and as they looked down, a large and sprawling town of brightly-colored stone nestled in a valley on the water, bounded by a river on its southern side. The city seemed massive; they had to be very far away, and it still seemed like it was taking up a lot of what they could see! “Is that Pokéopolis?” Fennekin beamed, stopping at the top of the hill and staring down. “It’s so much bigger than I ever expected!”

“What,” Emolga giggled as she lead the party down the hill towards the city, “were you expecting it to just be the Academy and a few other buildings? Lots of Pokémon call it home, and there’s everything you ever wanted there!”

“Not that we get the free time to go into the city,” Aipom grumbled to Ethan and Fennekin. “At least, we wouldn’t, if we actually went on all the explorations we said we’d go on!”

Emolga scoffed, then started waving her hand in the air dismissively. “If you actually went into town and didn’t just sit around the Academy moping all day, you’d enjoy it! There’s more to life than exploring, you know.”

Aipom rolled his eyes almost excessively dramatically, so much so that Ethan wondered if Emolga would even be able to hear it. “First she says I need to go on more explorations, then she says there’s more to life than exploring. Everybody else at the Academy is better, I promise.”

As the group descended the hill approaching Pokéopolis, the hard-packed dirt worn down from countless travelers turned to a more narrow worn cobblestone, forcing Aipom to begrudgingly walk next to Emolga to avoid spilling over into the grass. “Emolga doesn’t seem as bad as he says she is,” Fennekin whispered once they were out of earshot. “Aipom doesn’t seem that bad, either. It’ll be fun to explore with both of them, don’t you think?”

Ethan studied the two in front of them; the silence between them seemed all too intentional. But he nodded, for individually they seemed fine. Wait, had she just talked about exploring together? He supposed traveling through the forest was interesting, but fun? He was lucky he could still stand! 

By the time he could register Fennekin calling out his name, it was too late for him to move and avoid getting slammed into by...something...moving at high speed. Were they being attacked? If Pokéopolis was this dangerous, he wasn’t going to take another step further! At least there were four of them this time.

“Linoone!” Emolga yelled, much in the same tone she has used previously with Aipom. “How many times do we all have to remind you to watch where you’re going?”

“Sorry, sorry!” a feminine voice apologized. Whatever was on top of Ethan got off, and he saw a very long white Pokémon with light brown stripes carrying a satchel scrambling around the road, hastily picking up crumpled envelopes that had spread across the ground. “I’ve got the most recent adventure completion letters, and Roserade hates it if they’re late!”

“She doesn’t mean to run everybody over on the way out,” Aipom spoke up. “Didn’t you even run her over once?”

“Sorry, can’t talk!” Nearly as soon as she shoved the last letter into her satchel, she dropped to all fours and took off, quickly becoming a blur on the top of the hill.

“That’s how most people meet Linoone,” Emolga laughed nervously. “She’s really nice, but she gets a little too focused on her job.”

“She never delivers anything late,” Aipom shrugged, “if that counts for anything. Don’t think she’s rude for running into you and not even apologizing, if you manage to find her when she’s not running around she’ll give you a proper apology. Just get out of her way if you see her and you’ll be fine.”

Fennekin was still giggling as she came and reached out a paw to help Ethan up. “I told you to move. What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” he dismissed. “Let’s just get to the Academy and find out what’s going to happen from there.”

“Get Helioptile to go with you instead of dragging me next time,” Aipom groaned. “She’s always asking everybody to go to the Café with her, I swear she never actually explores.”

“I already go with her all the time! And she does go on explorations, more than you do! Maybe if you actually spoke to her instead of just taking all the easy missions that come in and going with me whenever Luxio sends us out together you’d know what everybody else is doing.”

“Come on Emolga, someone’s gotta do all those missions! Just because they’re easy doesn’t mean they’re not important, have you not gotten completely sick of Roserade telling everybody that?”

Emolga scoffed again and grumbled something under her breath, causing Fennekin to fall back to Aipom to speak quietly with him. Caught awkwardly between the two, Ethan slowed down to stay with Fennekin and Aipom. “Are you two not friends or something?” she asked gingerly, almost personally embarrassed to suggest it. 

“Emolga’s just kind of particular,” Aipom laughed. “She’s fine and a good explorer, but you have to get used to her. As much as I don’t like to say it, if you want to learn how to explore new places, you’ll want to go along with her. She’s saved me more times than I like to admit!”

A huge smile grew on Fennekin’s face; maybe that’s what she was interested in doing once she became an explorer? “Who else is at the Academy? Are Luxio, Roserade, and Helioptile all other Pokémon training there?”

“Helioptile is one of the other recruits with us,” he began explaining. “Luxio is the instructor, so she teaches us everything we need to know about being proper adventurers. And Roserade is the headmaster, so she oversees everything and makes sure we’re all doing everything we need to. It’s really great, though! Whatever you like doing, they’ll try and accommodate that and get you missions to focus on your interests.”

Fennekin stared straight ahead, almost unaware of what was going on around them. “I’d love to do everything. What do they usually focus on?”

“They’ll help you figure out what you like; even if you had an idea, they like to give us exposure to everything early on so we can find out what we really enjoy. I thought I wanted to be a really strong battler when I joined, but I really liked scouting and exploring a lot more than getting in fights.”

“I guess I’d love to be an explorer. What about you, Ethan?”

He nearly flinched; he had only the faintest idea what she was talking about. “I’m not really sure. Being an explorer might be fun, it would be really neat to go and see a lot of places.”

“We can help you if you want to explore!” Aipom beamed, jumping back onto his tail and bouncing next to Ethan. “I’m sure Roserade will assign us to help you sometime.”

“What’s the best place you’ve explored? Where was it?”

“Definitely the Marshy Lowlands!” he exclaimed. “That Seismitoad was really tough, though. We barely managed to run away unharmed!”

Emolga sighed, rubbing her temple. “You and I remember the Marshy Lowlands very differently, Aipom…”


	4. Chapter 2 — Pokéopolis, Part 2

Emolga and Aipom were right about the size of Pokéopolis; it was big. And more importantly, it was busy. The roads hardly ever widened from what they experienced in the outskirts of the city, but they frequently narrowed, and even where they didn’t they were filled with Pokémon lined with shops and houses. Pokémon of all shapes and sizes, from ones even smaller than they were to ones who needed to take up the entire street, wandered around, all of them seeming to have their own separate destinations. It was like nothing Ethan had ever seen! Well, he assumed. He couldn’t remember if he ever had. 

By the time they reached the large Academy, its four stories of intricately-carved wood overlooking a picturesque garden filled with fountains and plants, the sun was high in the sky and beating down on the group of four making their way through the city. Fennekin seemed to enjoy it, but she appeared alone in that regard. “It’s so pretty!” she exclaimed as they walked through the front gate and were almost immediately sheltered from the sun by large branches growing over the walkway. 

“The garden’s one of my favorite places to relax,” Emolga said, her words combining with a sigh of relief. From the shade or being back at the Academy, Ethan wasn’t sure.

The doors to the Academy were wide open, and once stepping inside, a wave of cool rushed over Ethan. It was relaxing, but such a transition made the interior seem almost too cold. He would warm up, he hoped. The building was not particularly wide, and the first floor seemed mostly like a lobby for the rest of the Academy. Some Pokémon were present in the first room, most of which were around the back wall; a set of stairs that went up and then doubled back around split the wall into two halves, and most of the Pokémon seemed to be around one of the two halves. 

“Roserade’s probably either on the second or fourth floors,” Emolga said, walking past the crowds towards the stairs. “This first floor is for the public, and it’s also where our job boards are. Pokémon who have jobs can come here to submit them to be put up, and then any of us or any of the affiliate teams can fulfill them and claim the rewards.”

“Affiliate teams?” Fennekin echoed. “Like, teams that aren’t a part of the Academy?”

“Correct,” Emolga nodded. “The Academy is a part of the Adventuring Society, which organizes Exploration Teams and funds resources for them like the Academy. You don’t have to go through or be a part of the Academy to make a team, but a lot of them do. Any affiliate teams would usually be down here; everything above us is for the Academy and its purposes.”

While being lead by Emolga, Ethan looked back and forth between the crowds at the two boards, trying to take in all of the various Pokémon at both. Large, small, colorful, drab — it seemed that no two were exactly alike. Were these all explorers, or were they other Pokémon wanting to post jobs of their own? There was no way to tell them apart, not that Ethan saw. A few of them wore scarves tied around their necks, but Emolga and Aipom weren’t so it obviously wasn’t a uniform for exploration teams and he didn’t think he had seen any other Pokémon in the city wearing them. 

“Upstairs is the gathering hall,” Emolga explained as they started walking up the flight of stairs. “That’s where we have Academy meetings, and where most of us will spend time during the day if we’re not out on missions or in town. Roserade, Luxio, and Cinccino, the Pokémon who are in charge of and run the Academy, also have their offices there. 

“Cinccino?” Fennekin beamed almost immediately after Emolga finished speaking. “The Cinccino, the famous explorer? I read all the stories about his adventurers, I didn’t know he helped run the Academy!”

“He does run the Academy!” Aipom butted in as Emolga opened her mouth to speak. “Roserade oversees all the operations and Luxio trains us, while Cinccino oversees both of them and deals with the Exploration Society. He’s not around a lot, but he’s really helpful when he is!”

As they crested the stairs to the next floor, Ethan looked around and saw significantly fewer Pokémon on that floor than the previous one. “Roserade!” Emolga called out to a Pokémon on the far end of the room from them, looking out a window at the garden below. 

“I thought that was you two coming in,” the Pokémon, a green two-legged Pokémon with a long cape and arms that ended in wide and broad flowers, responded. “You’re back so soon?”

“It didn’t go super well,” Emolga admitted through gritted teeth. “We found these two, there was some miscommunication,” she said, shooting an icy glare to Aipom, “and we battled them.”

“Emolga told me to attack them and they beat us,” Aipom spoke casually, almost exceedingly so. “They said they were interested in joining the Academy.”

Roserade sighed, then walked up to the four of them. “Go find Luxio, tell her you got defeated in the forest. I’m sure she’ll be able to find some training for you so this doesn’t happen again.”

“Yes, Roserade,” both Emolga and Aipom mumbled before quickly turning around and going up the stairs.

“Managing to defeat two of the trainees here,” Roserade mused as she looked between Ethan and Fennekin. “Not very easy, even if those two are more explorers than battlers. Are you two an exploration team?”

“I’m not even an explorer,” Fennekin responded meekly after a few moments pause. “And I don’t even know if Ethan is either.” Before Roserade could even ask, he shook his head.

“We’re always accepting aspiring explorers if they have the drive and determination. Unfortunately, while I am willing to induct you two, that decision lies with Cinccino, who is meeting with the Society today. Why don’t you two come back tomorrow, and we can discuss joining the Academy?”

Fennekin winced, then looked at Ethan almost expectedly. “We...don’t have any place to stay in the city, I don’t think. I’m not from here.”

The longer Fennekin stared at him, the more evident it became what she was thinking. “I don’t even remember anything before this morning,” he muttered. “I don’t think I have a place to stay.”

“We have two spare beds together,” Roserade mused. “Cinccino wouldn’t mind me letting you two use them tonight. And if he does…” She laughed to herself, then looked at one of the Pokémon sitting by the window on a side wall of the building. “Helioptile, you have no missions today, correct?”

The Pokémon placed a book on the windowsill and walked over; it stood on two legs, body covered in light yellow skin turning to back at the ends of its extremities and long ears hanging down the sides of its head. “I don’t, why?” she asked upon getting up to the group.

“We have two Pokémon that are interested in joining the Academy,” Roserade explained. “Cinccino is busy today and they are new to Pokéopolis, so why not show them around town and tell them about life as a trainee?”

“I’d love to!” she exclaimed, nearly bouncing on her feet. “You two are going to love Pokéopolis, it’s the best city ever!”

“Feel free to ask Helioptile any questions you have about being a trainee. While she is one of our newer entrants, she has still made plenty of successes and is one of our most enthusiastic members.”

“I won’t be able to show you everything today,” Helioptile proclaimed while walking to the stairs, “but I can show you some of my favorite spots!”

Fennekin and Ethan followed her to the stairs, Fennekin’s excitement almost matching Helioptile’s. “That sounds great! How do you like being at the Academy, by the way?”

“It’s the best thing ever! There are all sorts of really fun jobs that come in, and we get sent on explorations a lot whenever Roserade or Cinccino hear rumors about treasure. And everybody in the Academy is so much fun to work with, too!”

“How many Pokémon are at the Academy?” Fennekin wondered aloud. “We met Emolga and Aipom, and they told us about Luxio and Cinccino. Anybody else we should know?”

“You’ll meet them all for sure, and there’s a lot of us! You probably saw Emolga fight with Aipom, but they’re both really nice when they’re not fighting with each other. They’re also both really good at exploring, it’s why they get sent out on adventures together, even if they bicker all the time.” Her giggle carried a slight undertone of what seemed like pity, but for which Pokémon, Ethan couldn’t tell.

“What kinds of jobs does the Academy have? What do you usually get sent on?”

The heat hit Ethan again as they walked out of the building into the garden, but this time it seemed like only he minded it. “We go on all types of missions,” Helioptile explained, “but if you have certain types of missions or explorations you like, they’ll try to send you on more of those. I like everything so they send me on any type of mission, but somebody like Yamper who is really good at treasure hunting they’ll try to send on missions to investigate rumors of treasure. Starting out, though, they’ll probably have you do everything so you can find out what you like.”

As they walked through the crowded streets of Pokéopolis, Ethan had to struggle to keep up with Helioptile effortlessly weaving in and out of traffic and sliding past and even under much larger Pokémon. Miraculously, neither he nor Fennekin got separated, and the group stopped in front of a small corner shop with a sign in the shape of a cup of tea hanging above the door. “This is my favorite café in the whole city!” Helioptile beamed as she opened the door and walked in. 

Following after her, the inside of the café was a remarkably different atmosphere than the crowded street. Pokémon were still present, sure, but only slightly less than half of the tables were occupied, with two Pokémon behind the counter; one floating in what looked like a tea kettle, and another short, pink one off to the side mixing dough. “Helioptile!” the floating one exclaimed as soon as he saw her. “No missions today?”

“I’m actually showing two newcomers around the city!” She stepped aside, then turned to face them. “This is Polteageist, he runs this café. And that over there is Alcremie, his business partner.”

Fennekin waved at the one named Polteageist. “Hello, Polteageist! You have a very nice shop, I’d love to come buy something sometime once I have some money!”

“Any friend of Helioptile’s is a friend of mine! Why don’t I make you three some tea, on the house! It’s not every day you get to join the Academy.”

“Come on,” Helioptile said, “let’s find a table.”

Not long after sitting at one of the unoccupied tables, Polteageist floated over with a large tray and placed it down in front of them. A polished white ceramic tea kettle with three matching cups shared the space with three small plates, each with a matching donut with a milky white glaze over it. “Take some tea and a donut,” Helioptile ordered. “Polteageist sometimes puts things in the tea that can help you out on an adventure, and Alcremie uses a lot of gummis to make her donut glazes.”

“Gummi?” Ethan repeated, taking one of the plates and looking at it. He couldn’t remember if he had ever had a donut before, but it sure looked tasty. 

“A gummi is a super delicious candy you can buy or find in dungeons.” Helioptile’s smile grew almost to the point of no longer being contained on her face. “They come in all different colors, and different types of Pokémon love different ones! I love the yellow and white gummis because I’m an electric and a normal type. Since you’re also an electric type, I bet you’ll love yellow gummis as well!”

“I love the red ones,” Fennekin smiled as she grabbed one of the remaining plates and an empty teacup, “but I’ll eat almost all of them! Except the blue ones. And the brown ones. And the gray ones taste kinda funny, too…”

“Make sure to drink some of this tea!” Helioptile continued, grabbing the pot and beginning to pour some for Ethan. “It smells like Polteageist made a really hearty tea, so you’ll be able to take more hits in a dungeon before fainting.”

As instructed, Ethan took the cup of the steamy tea and sniffed it. It smelled rather normal — he wasn’t sure how he knew what was normal was for tea, but he did — but rich and pleasant nonetheless. It tasted similarly, a rich and slightly bitter and earthy warmth that quickly spread relaxation from his stomach out through his body. He felt less aware of his body, but in a good way, tiny little uncomfortable sensations he didn’t even know he felt going away. 

Helioptile poured a cup and handed it to Fennekin, then poured herself one. “Polteageist isn’t the only Pokémon that makes lots of different types of teas, so you can find find some Pokémon in dungeons carrying different types. Sometimes you can buy them too, and if you bring them to Polteageist, he’ll brew it for you!”

“I can see why you love this place!” Fennekin chirped after taking a sip of her tea. “This is delicious! Do you get a lot of time to come here?”

“Not really,” she laughed nervously. “There’s always a lot of missions coming in, and it seems like more and more are coming in every day with all of these mystery dungeons popping up. Nearly every exploration team in the city is busy every single day, and there’s still missions that don’t get completed! The Academy gives us some days off so we don’t get burnt out, but there’s still a lot of work.”

“How bad have the mystery dungeons been getting?” Fennekin asked with a mouthful of donut, sending crumbs across the table. “I know there’s been a lot more of them, but how worried is everybody about it? Is Misty Forest the only one by Pokéopolis?”

“It’s definitely the closest. As for everyone else? A lot of Pokémon in town are scared, even if it doesn’t look like they are; they’re just trying to keep calm. As for explorers, I know a lot of them are trying to find out why it’s happening and why it seems to be getting worse, but they haven’t found anything that I know of. That then makes it hard to stay calm, because the best explorers in the world don’t know, you know? But I’m sure they’ll find something soon, none of them got to where they are today by not finding the answers to all sorts of mysteries!”

“That’s a good way to think about it,” Ethan nodded.

A loud clattering of ceramic on ceramic announced that Fennekin was done with her tea, as she practically slammed her empty mug back down on her crumb-covered plate after finishing it. “That was really delicious! Where should we go next?”

Ethan couldn’t exactly read the look on Helioptile’s face, but it was something very similar to disappointment. Or was she upset? “You’re already done?”

“It was really good!” Surprise, that was the emotion on Helioptile’s face. And not a good surprise; something told him that she wanted to spend much more time in the café. That, or she wasn’t supposed to just scarf down her food and instead take the time to enjoy it. Now that he thought of it, it was likely both.

“Well, I’m glad you liked it at least…” Helioptile took a big bite of her donut before washing it down with a large gulp of tea. “We can go see something else if you’d like. Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?”

After a few seconds deep in thought, Fennekin nearly jumped for joy. “I always heard that there are a ton of shops in Pokéopolis, is that true?”

“Oh my gosh, you’re going to love the market! Come on, I know exactly where we should go!”


	5. Chapter 2 — Pokéopolis, Part 3

“It was nice of the Academy to let us have a room even though we’re not enrolled yet,” Ethan said, adjusting the piled hay that was his bed. Was hay on the floor normal, or was that something thrown together quickly to accommodate them since they had nowhere else to go?

“I don’t even think I’ll be able to sleep tonight,” Fennekin giggled while looking out of the small, open window in their room. “I’ve wanted to join the Academy for as long as I can remember, it almost doesn’t feel real that I’m here.” She took a deep breath in, then gently exhaled. “It’s weird looking out at the stars tonight. I loved looking at the night sky when I was little, and even though I’m so far from home, they’re the same stars I’ve always seen.”

Ethan got up and walked over to the window, brushing tiny bits of hay dust off his body while doing so. Fennekin scooted over, allowing him to take in the view. The room was on the back wall of the Academy, allowing them to look over the city and up to the sky without the trees of the courtyard in the way. A few windows in the city were illuminated with the dancing, flickering light characteristic of candles or lanterns, but darkness had fallen over the majority of the city and settled it into a quiet that felt strange contrasted with the chaos of the daytime.

“Do you see Ursaring Major?” She pointed at a cluster of stars high in the sky, yet all Ethan saw was thousands of little lights practically indistinguishable from each other. “I always really liked that one. And if you follow those two stars there, you can find Ursaring Minor as well!”

“They just all look like stars to me,” he admitted.

She tilted her head far to the right, nearly to her shoulder, then quickly snapped it to the other shoulder. “They’re kind of hard to see from here,” she muttered to herself. “Why don’t we go up to the roof, and I can show you all of the constellations I know?”

“The roof?” he echoed. “Can we even get up there?”

“I don’t know, but we can look! Come on, we’ve had a long day and I want to make sure to get plenty of rest to start training tomorrow, so we don’t have much time.” Before he could even respond, Fennekin grabbed his hand and dragged him to the door, but as soon as she swung it open, she came to a halt. She seemed so excited, what could make her stop?

“Perfect timing,” he heard Roserade say from the hallway. “Cinccino just returned and said he was willing to enroll you tonight if you wished, so I came to see if you were still awake. Is this a good time?”

“Yes!” Fennekin beamed as she tore her paw away from his hand. Once she went to take a step, however, she paused and turned back to Ethan. “Oh, Ethan, I should ask you! Are you ready to go become an exploration team?”

Ethan opened his mouth to respond, but found that nothing came out. He was definitely prepared, sure, but it was all such a shock. A day ago he...well, he had no idea where, or even who he was a day ago. He didn’t even know what he was a day ago; was he really a human? If so, how long ago did he change? And how? More importantly, why?

“Are you okay?” Roserade asked, snapping him back into reality. “You had a thousand-yard stare, and you looked troubled. Do you need somebody?”

“I’m fine,” he shakily laughed, trying to ease his nerves. “Sorry, it’s been a long day. We can go make an exploration team now.”

“Cinccino’s office isn’t very far, just by the stairs. I trust that the room is acceptable? It was all that we could do on such short notice.”

“It’s perfect!” Fennekin exclaimed. “I’ve been traveling for a while, so just having a bed is so nice. And it’s super comfy, too!”

Roserade laughed a little, a wide smile growing on her face. “I’m glad that you think so. It’s no resort here, but we do what we can to make our recruits comfortable. We ask a lot of you all, so it’s only fair we do what we can to make your time here less stressful.”

As they passed by numerous other rooms on the way to the stairs, Ethan could hear soft voices coming from nearly all of them, hushed conversations of what seemed like plans for explorations or tales of treasure, all with wildly varying degrees of realism. Truth be told, he didn’t understand the excitement behind some of the stories of unbelievable treasures to be found or powers to be gained. It was good to have dreams, for sure, but to him it seemed like many of them were just aiming for something out of their reach, literally or realistically. 

Before long, their small group arrived at a narrow door just to the right of the stairs down to the lower floors; an identical one mirrored it on the left. “Cinccino,” Roserade called out as she opened the door, “the newcomers are willing to be inducted tonight.” She took a few steps in, then turned her head back and motioned for Ethan and Fennekin to follow her in.

“Welcome!” a new voice called out as they stepped inside. On the far side of the room, behind a desk piled high with papers and cluttered with all sorts of unique-looking baubles, stood a short gray Pokémon with a sweeping mane of fine white hair surrounding him. Despite the fact that it seemed to almost envelop the small Pokémon, it looked very glossy and meticulously styled, creating a wave of controlled chaos around him. It flipped as he moved, and Ethan could swear he smelled flowers when it did so. “My name is Cinccino, and I run the Adventuring Academy. What are your names?”

“I’m Fennekin,” she responded, “and this is Ethan. We’re really excited to join the Academy!”

“And we’d be pleased to have you!” he beamed with just as much excitement as she had. “We handle all of the paperwork and certifications to become an exploration team for you, so all you have to do is commit and decide on a name!”

“A name…” Fennekin looked at Ethan and laughed sheepishly while doing so. “Honestly, I never thought of a name.” That made Ethan tilt his head a little bit in confusion; she’d never thought of a name? Ever? 

“What about Team Stargazers?” he blurted out before he even knew he was finished with his thought. “You know, because, well, we were just looking at the stars, and—”

“Team Stargazers!” she exclaimed. “I love it, it’s perfect!”

“What a lovely name!” Cinccino announced. “Team Stargazers, a name to remember for sure!” A quick smile flashed on his face, and then he reached down under his desk to pull out a small wooden chest. Tucking it under one arm, he quickly threw papers aside and on top of the existing piles — Roserade winced at the ever-growing mess that was his desk — and set the chest down once there was a small clear space on his desk. “Now come on, open it!”

“A box?” Fennekin asked as she walked up to the desk and began studying it. “Why a box?”

“It’s an official Exploration Society exploration starting kit! Everything you could ever need is inside of there!”

A single chuckle came from Roserade. “There’s nothing official about it, it’s just what we give new trainees. Go on, take a look. Everything in there is yours.”

Ethan looked to Fennekin, and met her eyes as she looked at him. “You’re the one who’s always wanted to do this, you should get to open it.”

“You thought of the name, you should get to open it.”

Cinccino cleared his throat, then laughed nervously while brushing some of his flowing mane out of his face. “I know I gave you some fanfare, but it really is just a box…”

“Together,” Ethan suggested. “What do you say?” The only response he got from Fennekin was a sly smile and a paw placed on the box. Following her lead, he reached over to the box and opened it before turning his head to look inside. 

“That right there is an exploration toolbox,” Cinccino explained, pointing to the small colorful box inside of the larger box. “It’ll hold any items you need to take into dungeons, as well as anything that you pick up inside of dungeons!”

“Items?” Fennekin echoed. “Like berries and seeds?”

Cinccino opened his mouth to speak, but Roserade’s voice cut through before he could say anything. “Amongst other things. Orbs, thrown items, food, and special items. Don’t worry too much if you don’t know what all of those things are, we’ll teach you in time.”

Cinccino continued, almost as if he was wanting to lead the conversation. “Then we have exploration badges.” He pointed to two shiny metal badges nestled in the corner of the box, pale green ovals with a bright, shining silver spot in the middle. “We gave you a few for you two to use, and extras should you wish to adventure with more Pokémon. They signify that you’re an official exploration team, and if you’re rescuing a Pokémon in a dungeon, they allow you to magically transport them to safety once you find them.”

“Wow…” was all Fennekin could say as she gently picked one up and stared at her reflection in it. 

“You’ll also be able to improve how they look as your team ranks up,” Roserade added. “Do you see those two badges in the case on the bookshelf behind Cinccino?”

Fennekin looked up from her own badge and at the small bookcase on the back wall of Cinccino’s office, where amongst the clutter and disorganized books, some half open almost as if to indicate a page, stood a small display case with two badges similar in shape and little else to their own. Both badges shone with a brightly-polished gold instead of the pale green of theirs, and two stars, one blue on the left and one green on the right, were worked into the metal. The way the stars reflected light, Ethan could have sworn they were gemstones. “Whose are those?” Fennekin asked, seemingly forgetting about the badge in her paws out of excitement.

Cinccino looked back at the badges, a nostalgic smile on his face. “Those were our badges from when we were explorers together.”

“You two were Emerald rank?” Fennekin truly did forget about the badge in her hands, as she nearly crushed it while immediately jumping to all fours. “I knew you two were great explorers, but not as great as Emerald! Why would you ever stop?”

Both Cinccino and Roserade looked at each other, then began laughing. “Questions for another day, perhaps,” he grinned.

“...What’s Emerald rank?” Ethan asked.

Roserade opened her mouth to answer, but Fennekin blurted out before she was able to start. “It’s one of the highest ranks there is! Most exploration teams dream of getting there, and very few of them do!”

“It’s the fourth-highest rank there is,” Roserade elaborated. “While technically it is the Two-Star Master rank, most of us just refer to it as Emerald rank because that second star is made of an emerald. Which does demonstrate nicely the point I wished to make that your badges change as you rank up; as you can see, the color is different, which is how your badge will change most of the time. The Master ranks are the only ones that add stars, and once you get five, you’ve hit the Grandmaster rank, which only a handful have ever held.”

“How do you rank up?” He grabbed one of the other badges out from the box, and Fennekin had calmed down enough to pick up the one she had dropped and began inspecting it again. 

“Doing missions and making discoveries will earn you points, which are tracked by the Adventuring Society. They’ll reach out to you when you level up, sending you your new badges as well as a few items to help you out in harder missions. Some missions are even exclusive only for teams of a certain rank, if the Society deems that they’re too dangerous or require some secrecy.”

“What rank are we now?” Ethan asked. The badge looked to be well-made, if a little plain. Perhaps they weren’t very intricate because they were supposed to move up in rank quickly; it would be a little wasteful to spend a lot of time on something you weren’t going to use for long.

“You two are starting at trainee rank,” Cinccino said. “Before long, though, you will likely move onto the beginner rank, which is the next rank up. After that comes rookie, and then normal, which is where most of the others in the Academy are. Those who graduate and go on to be independent explorers of their own usually do so at super or hyper rank, which are the two above normal.”

“Let’s work hard and get all the way to Emerald rank!” Fennekin exclaimed; when Ethan looked up, he met her eyes. “It’ll be hard, but I know we can do it!”

“It’s good that you’re already setting goals for yourself,” Roserade nodded. “Keep your dreams in mind, and never stop working to achieve them. Of course, remember to have fun along the way.” A warm, thoughtful smile grew on her face as she looked to Cinccino. “Some of the most fun times I ever had were when we were ranked lower, when we had a world of opportunities in front of us waiting to be seized. I might say that the Frigid Forest expedition gave me some of my most treasured memories.”

A similarly warm smile appeared on Cinccino’s face, and Ethan could swear that he saw his eyes begin to glisten. “A wonderful time indeed, but you and I can reminisce later. Those items are the main things we wanted to give you tonight; do you have any further questions? I know it is late, and I would not want to keep you two up the night before your debut as explorers!”

Roserade shook her head and crossed her arms. “You’re tired from all of your meetings with the Society, aren’t you?”

“I admire Dragalge, you know that, but my oh my is he long-winded! But truly, our two new recruits should rest up; Luxio likes to make them hit the ground running.”

“We’ll let you two go,” Roserade said as she closed the toolbox and handed it to Ethan. “We’ll finish up your paperwork and send it off to the Society as soon as it’s done. Rest well; I believe Luxio may already know what she wants you two to do tomorrow, and she is quite fond of pushing your limits to make you grow.”


	6. Chapter 3 — Stargazers, Part 1

_**Chapter 3 — Stargazers** _

“What do you think Luxio will be training us about?” Fennekin asked. They hadn’t been in the room very long, but she had already begun to pace around anxiously. Nearly as soon as they had entered, she jumped into what had appeared to be a small arena, a small wooden wall surrounding a rectangular area of scuffed-up and chipped floor. 

“It sounds like she trains everybody on battling,” Ethan thought out loud, “but you already know how to battle, and I’m learning.”

Fennekin quickly paused, winced, then continued pacing. “I couldn’t get through the forest until I had you with me. I know how to battle, but I’m not very strong.”

“That should make this process easier,” a voice came from behind them, causing both Ethan and Fennekin to turn and look. Walking into the room was a blue and black Pokémon on four legs, with sharp yellow eyes that seemed to pierce right through Ethan. Her movements, fluid and graceful, made her seem ready to jump into a fight at a moment’s notice. 

Contrasting Luxio’s intimidating presence was a small, brown and yellow Pokémon following behind her. Walking on all fours with legs seemingly too small for its own body, the Pokémon waddled into the room and gave Ethan and Fennekin a happy wave with one of its front paws. 

“My name is Luxio,” the blue and black Pokémon said, stepping over the short wooden wall into the arena, “and I am the one in charge of training recruits. Aipom and Emolga told me you two already seem to understand the basics of battling?”

“I had to teach myself,” Fennekin admitted. “I’ve been traveling for a while, and a lot of Pokémon tried to attack me along the way.”

“And that was the first time I’d ever battled,” Ethan spoke up. “And it’s not like we beat them easily; they put up a good fight.”

With a wave of her paw, Luxio seemed to dismiss their comments. “A win’s a win. And while those two aren’t the most powerful in the Academy, they know how to keep up.” A devious smile grew on her face as she looked at the two of them. “Let me see what you can do. Hit me with your strongest move!”

“Hit you?” Fennekin yelped in surprise.

“I promise you I’ve had worse,” she laughed. “Both of you, come on!”

Fennekin looked to Ethan, worry across her face. Were they really going to do this? Sure, Luxio seemed tough, but both of them attacking at once? Maybe the other Pokémon was there to help her if it really was too much for her, a little extra caution even though she claimed she could take it.

“After you,” Fennekin said with a shaky voice. He nodded once, then built up electricity to use Thundershock. Now that he wasn’t in the middle of a battle fearing for his safety, the electricity flowing through him felt...right, almost. Natural. Like he was meant to be doing it. He was a Pokémon now, after all, and he supposed it made sense that he should be using his moves. 

Releasing all of his pent-up energy as an attack, he saw flames come from beside him out of the corner of his eye; she must be using Ember. The two attacks slammed into Luxio, and as they made impact, she began gritting her teeth to brace herself. They stopped their attacks, and Ethan could swear he could hear her groaning. 

Before he could take a step to go see if she was okay, her mouth changed into a smile; she wasn’t groaning, she was laughing! “Not bad,” she said through a deep exhale. “Of course you still have plenty of training to do, but for now, I’d say you’re strong enough to take on beginner missions.” After a quick shake of her head, she motioned for the other Pokémon in the room to come over. She didn’t even look hurt! She really was tough.

“You’re going to be accompanying Yamper on his mission today,” she explained as the short Pokémon vaulted the low wall around the arena and walked up next to her. “Yamper, if you would?”

“I have a mission to go to the Dark Cavern!” He briefly reared back on his hind legs, then plopped back down again. “Some researchers say that there’s a piece of an important map down there, and they want us to go and find it!”

“Yamper and I have agreed to let you two take the lead on this mission,” Luxio explained. “He is one of the more senior members of the Academy, and is a talented explorer. Don’t be afraid to ask him for help or guidance, and he will be there to step in if anything is getting difficult.”

“I can help show you about how to prepare for an exploration, too!” Yamper hopped back over the small arena wall, then walked over to the door and opened it. “I don’t think Helioptile showed you the bank, did she?”

“She just really showed us the shops and the market,” Ethan responded. Nearly as soon as he was finished speaking, he heard a few delighted chuckles coming from Luxio’s direction.

“That sounds like her,” she continued laughing. “Yamper, I think that’s a wonderful idea. While you’re there, make sure Kangaskhan and Morgrem set up accounts for Team Stargazers so they can begin storing their own items and money.”

“Can do! Come on you two, let’s go!” Fennekin looked to Ethan, then the two gave each other a quick nod before exiting the arena and following Yamper out through the door.

“It’s nice to meet you, by the way!” Fennekin beamed, moving up next to Yamper. “Are you part of an exploration team as well?”

He shook his head. “It’s just me! Most Pokémon don’t come in with a team already made; some do, but everybody else in the Academy usually just starts off by themselves and then either becomes a solo explorer or makes a team while they’re in here.”

“Solo exploring doesn’t sound very fun. Have you ever tried making a team?”

As they stepped outside into the garden of the Academy, Ethan had to put an arm up over his face to avoid getting blinded by the sudden sunlight. It wasn’t as hot as it had been yesterday, thankfully, but the brightness was a strong change from being inside.

“I like exploring by myself and with friends,” Yamper responded as they began walking towards the center of Pokéopolis. “While having a team helps you a lot, there can also be downsides. Say we were all a team, for example; we’re all weak to ground type moves, so if we went somewhere with a lot of ground types, it could be really bad for us to all travel together, whereas just one of us might be able to sneak through unnoticed. Even if we were somewhere with a lot of water type Pokémon that Ethan and I are strong against, they might be able to corner you.”

Her eyes went wide and her face blank at that last comment. “There aren’t any water types where we’re going, right?”

Yamper thought it over for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “Not that I know of, but there could be. I asked Lampent, and she said that it’s mostly dark types there.”

“Dark types…” Fennekin echoed, almost mindlessly, before shuddering. What was she thinking about?

With Fennekin seemingly lost in thought, Ethan spoke up after a few moments of awkward silence. “Who’s Lampent?”

“She’s another recruit at the Academy,” he explained. “She loves to research almost everything about adventuring, so I go to her all the time to learn about where I’m going and what I should do to prepare! I hate that kind of stuff, so it’s awesome when we go on adventures together! Even if she’s not going with you, she loves to help everybody out, so if you’re ever stuck, go to her.”

“What do you usually research before an exploration?” Fennekin asked. “And where do Pokémon even keep that information?”

“I don’t really research much,” he beamed, almost proud of the fact. “I usually have Hattrem or Lampent help me since they’re so much better at it. They say the best place is the Academy’s library, where you can find information on how big an area is and what kinds of Pokémon are there, but if you’ve never been there, then it’s just what scouts have reported. We haven’t gone to Dark Cavern yet, so we don’t know much: just that it’s not very long and has some dark types. It’ll be a great mission to take you on since it won’t take too long and neither of you are weak to dark types!”

“I’m still kind of new to battling other Pokémon,” Ethan spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. Just why had Fennekin told him to not say he was a human? “Just what should I know about dark types?”

“They’re strong against psychic and ghost types,” Yamper explained, “but if you have any bug, fighting, or fairy moves, then you can do a lot of damage to them. A lot of them know moves to make you less powerful, so make sure to knock them out quickly.”

“Got it,” he nodded. Come to think of it, what type were his moves? What moves did he even know? He knew about Thundershock and Quick Attack, but surely he had to know more, right? How many moves did a Pokémon usually know? Luxio would definitely know if her job was to train the recruits, but was something like that so basic that every Pokémon should know it?

“You two aren’t from here, right?” Yamper asked as they wove their way through the crowds leading to the market. Instead of giving a response, Ethan looked to Fennekin, and met her gaze for what felt like far too long. 

“I’m from a town far to the west,” Fennekin spoke up eventually. “You’ve probably never heard of it.”

“What about you, Ethan? Where are you from?”

Somehow, Ethan knew that question would come eventually; still, his eyes grew wide. Fennekin told him to not tell anybody else that he was a human, but why? Given the exasperated look she was giving him from the other side of Yamper, that still held true. 

“You okay?” Yamper asked. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

“Ethan has amnesia!” Fennekin blurted out. Almost as soon as she had done so, she stopped in her tracks and threw her front paws over her mouth, turning as bright red as the hairs on her ears.

“Amnesia?” Yamper echoed, looking from Fennekin to Ethan and back again. “Have you seen Togetic yet?”

“Who’s Togetic?” Ethan asked. “Are they another one of the recruits?”

“She’s the doctor that’s closest to the Academy,” he explained, “so if there’s anything wrong with us, we get sent to her. I don’t think she’s ever treated amnesia, but if there’s anyone who can, it’s her! We have some time before we have to head out, if she’s not busy then we can stop by.”

“I don’t really know if we’ll have time, will we? We should just go to the bank and then head out.” Something about her tone told Ethan that her concern went beyond just delaying the mission. Did she not like going to the doctor?

“Roserade will understand if we’re late because we brought Ethan to Togetic; it’s not an urgent mission, and if we have to wait until tomorrow then that’s fine.”

The group walked through the crowd in relative silence, Ethan unsure of how to make further conversation and Fennekin seeming to not want to. Yamper asked a few questions here and there that Ethan would answer, of course, but having a true conversation still felt awkward. Maybe once he had...well, any memories, he would be better at it. 

Before long they came across a building fairly short for how close to the center of the city it was, only two stories tall, and narrowly squished between two large shops. Old was not quite the right word to describe how its exterior looked, but weathered. Whoever owned it clearly cared about keeping it up, but there was only so much one could do to stave off the passage of time.

The insides of the building, once entered, felt very much the same. Sure the floorboards seemed a little scuffed and the reception desk looked like it had been worn down over the course of many years, but nothing looked dirty or broken. It made Ethan feel strangely nostalgic, though for what he wasn’t sure.

“Good morning, Yamper!” a Pokémon chirped from behind the desk as she flew up into the air. She was fairly small and nearly pure white, save for a few red and blue splotches on her round stomach. Her wings almost seemed too small to be carrying her, but despite that she seemed graceful as she fluttered in place. “Is something the matter?”

“Not with me,” he shook his head, “but these are our new recruits, Ethan and Fennekin! Apparently Ethan has amnesia, so I wanted to bring them here to see you.”

“Amnesia?” she repeated, flying down to Ethan and feeling his head. “It doesn’t look like you have any trauma. How do you feel?”

“I feel fine,” he shrugged.

“What did you lose? What’s the last thing you can remember before the gap in your memories?”

“Nothing,” he admitted.

“Nothing at all?”

“I remembered my name, and that’s it.”

“Was he sick before losing his memory?” she asked Yamper and Fennekin. “Or did he maybe take an attack to the head or neck not long before?”

“I met him yesterday morning as he woke up,” Fennekin mumbled. “That’s the first thing he says he can remember.”

She continued studying him for a few moments, then flew back behind the desk and opened a drawer before rummaging through it. “You three are probably going on a mission, yes?”

“That’s right!” Yamper exclaimed. “We’re going to the Dark Cavern!”

Togetic grabbed something round and shiny in her hands, then flew over to Yamper before giving it to him. “I have a spare escape orb; please, take it. He looks fine and I know your missions are important so I’ll let him go, but if anything happens, please use this and bring him right to me. And Ethan, if you’re not feeling well, tell Yamper so he can get you out safely.” She looked at Yamper, then giggled. “I know all of you recruits are stubborn when it comes to getting your explorations done, but make sure to never do so at the threat of your own safety! And don’t tell me that Luxio will get mad, I have asked her personally, and she agrees with me!”

“We’ll probably be fine!” he dismissed while gently placing the orb in his bag. “I’ll be there with them; since they’re new, Luxio is having me go with them to keep them safe and try to get them out of any trouble they might find themselves in.”

“Just please stay safe.” Togetic’s smile was motherly — Ethan didn’t remember his mother, but he had to have one, right? — as she flew back over behind the desk. “Ethan, if you wouldn’t mind, are you able to come by sometime you’re free? I know you must be busy with training, but inform Luxio or Roserade and they should be able to give you some time to come down here. While I’m not immediately worried, I do want to do a thorough examination.”

“I’ll be sure to,” he called back to her as he followed Yamper and Fennekin out of the building, both of whom seemed very eager to get on the road. “She seems nice,” he noted once he was outside with them.

“She’s great! She worries about us a lot though, so sometimes you have to go to her and you end up telling her that everything’s going to be okay! At least that didn’t last very long, so I can help you get set up at the item and money banks. Kangaskhan is really nice, and Morgrem is...well, he’s nice too, but he’s kinda weird...you’ll know what I mean once we get there.”


	7. Chapter 3 — Stargazers, Part 2

“I get why they call it the Dark Cavern,” Fennekin mumbled to nobody in particular as she stared down the almost unnaturally black hole in the rock in front of them. “Will we even be able to see down there?”

“Aipom said that there’s a little bit of light in there,” Yamper responded as he rummaged through the team’s exploration bag. “Even if not, you’re a fire type, so we could always have you light something to lead our way!”

“Other Pokémon would immediately know we’re there,” she shook her head, “so hopefully we don’t have to resort to that. What are you looking for, anyways? I thought we went through everything in there while at the bank.”

“There they are!” Yamper exclaimed as he pulled out two dull green strips of cloth, striped with bits of even darker green. “I snuck these in while you two weren’t looking. It’s a gift from the rest of the recruits to you two!”

Ethan looked at the two strips, subconsciously cocking his head slightly to the side. They looked well-made, but rather plain. “Rags?” he asked.

“They’re exploration team scarves!” Fennekin beamed, running up to Yamper and studying them intently. “They’re not required by any means, but a lot of exploration teams will wear them to show they’re a part of a team.” She looked to Yamper, then back at the scarves before looking crestfallen. “Yamper, there’s only two. There’s three of us.”

“We got them for you two!” he explained. “We’re all on the same ‘team’ as recruits, but you two are the only ones who already have an actual team formed, so we wanted to get you scarves to show it! Here, try them on!”

Ethan walked to Yamper, and by the time he got to him, Fennekin had already begun putting hers around her neck and tying it off. “Where did you get these?” she asked. “You said you got them from the bank, does that mean you already had them?”

“We bought them yesterday, then told Kangaskhan to give them to whoever was taking you on an exploration. There’s a Pokémon in the market named Leavanny who makes them, so we bought two. These are just the basic ones, but once you rank up or go on certain explorations, you’re allowed to get different colors, patterns, and types of scarves.”

“That’s so nice of you all!” Fennekin’s eyes began glistening, and her breathing became unstable. “I don’t even know what to say!”

“It’s nothing,” Yamper laughed nervously, taking a small step away from her. “Really, it wasn’t that much money. We just thought it would be a little something nice to give you two as a celebration of joining the Academy.”

“Thanks,” Ethan smiled as he finished tying the scarf around his neck. “You guys all seem really nice.”

“Everybody in the Academy is!” Yamper exclaimed. “Being a recruit is tough, so why not all have fun together?”

Fennekin jumped up, then wiped the dampening fur around her eyes. “That’s so great! And speaking of nice, thanks so much for being willing to take us on a mission of yours! I just really hope bringing us along won’t slow you down…”

“It’ll be fine!” Yamper dismissed her concerns with a wave of one of his front paws. “I always loved going with other Pokémon on their missions when I was new, so when Luxio asked me, I immediately said yes! Even if we do faint and can’t finish the mission, we’ll be able to look back at it and learn from it!”

“Yeah…” Fennekin looked straight at him, then nodded her head vigorously. “Yeah, you’re right! Come on, let’s go; let’s try to get back to the Academy by sunset!”

“Lead the way, you two!”

_ Dark Cavern _

_ B1F _

“I can hardly see my own hands in front of my face,” Ethan grumbled as he looked around the room they were currently in. 

“Some dungeons are like that,” Yamper explained as he walked up next to Ethan. “Be careful when going through the corridors, since you can’t see very far down them. There could be Pokémon waiting there to attack you!”

“Sounds fun,” he sighed as he started walking to the exit of the room located on the far wall from where they currently were. There was another exit on his left, but something made him go for the one right ahead of him instead. Is that what instinct felt like? Because if so, instinct felt an awful lot like not actually knowing what to do and making a complete guess. But they were following him, so he had to be the one deciding where to go. Not like they could know the way, either, if this was a Mystery Dungeon too. The concept still confused him.

“Is there any way to make it brighter in here?” Fennekin wondered aloud. “I bet if I cast Ember down the hallway, we could see further!”

“The darkness in here doesn’t quite work like that,” Yamper responded, his voice faint to Ethan. When he turned to look back, he could see that Yamper was at the end of the line, Fennekin in between the two of them. “If you have an item called a luminous orb you can dispel the darkness on a floor, but otherwise, you have to just be careful.”

As Ethan opened his mouth to respond, he walked into a small room and almost jumped; he could see a Pokémon to his left that hadn’t been there before! Instinctually, he flooded his body with electricity and sent it towards whatever was next to him. By the time he was able to process what was going on, there was a furry gray Pokémon lying on the ground in front of him. Had he really knocked it out with one Thundershock? 

“A critical hit!” Yamper exclaimed. “Great job!”

“What’s a critical hit?” Ethan and Fennekin both asked in unison.

“Sometimes, your move has just the right amount of power and hits a Pokémon just right that it does a lot more damage and can even break through a Pokémon’s defenses! Some moves are more likely to get a critical hit than others, but even then you just have to hope you get one.”

Fennekin looked down at the Pokémon lying on the ground, her face tightening slightly in worry. “Is this Pokémon going to be okay? It looked like it got hit hard.”

“This Poochyena will be just fine,” Yamper reassured her. “It just got knocked out is all. Pretty soon, it’ll wake up and be on its way.”

“We should probably start moving before it does so.” Ethan looked around the room, eyes stopping upon seeing a small hint of blue in the corner, a noticeable change from the gray and brown dirt floor. “What’s that over there?”

The three Pokémon walked to the corner of the small room, and Yamper excitedly reached down to pick up a dusty blue orb. “It’s a rollcall orb!”

“What does that orb do?” Fennekin asked. “Does it work like the escape orb Togetic gave us?”

“Kind of.” He handed it to Ethan, who put it in their item bag. “If we ever get separated on a floor, you can break it and we’ll all be brought to you! They can be nice to keep with you, just in case.”

“I’ll be staying close to you two,” Fennekin mumbled. “This place gives me the creeps!”

“If you ever want,” Yamper continued, “you could split up in a dungeon to cover more ground! I prefer to go with my teammates, because then we can all fight together. It’s a lot easier to get overwhelmed when you’re all alone than if you’re with others. You also get to spend more time with your friends!”

Fennekin looked around the room, then back to Ethan and Yamper. “I think it’s probably better if we stay together, especially since this is our first true mission. I don’t think it would look good if you went back and said that you let us wander alone…”

“Luxio might be mad,” he laughed, “but I bet Cinccino would be proud of you two! If you do want to try, just let me know and we can split up.”

Ethan looked to Fennekin briefly and nodded in agreement. “Fennekin’s right, I don’t want to split up. I guess we’ll keep this orb for emergencies, though.”

Yamper barked excitedly. “You’re the leader on this mission. We’ll do as you say!”

Leader. That was still kind of strange to think about. He was well-suited for it, he supposed, since he legitimately couldn’t remember a day where he hadn’t been in a mystery dungeon. That at least had to count for something, didn’t it?

Now was not the time for pondering his amnesia. Ethan continued scanning the room that they were in, and found nothing else save for an exit out that was left of where he had come in. Fennekin and Yamper fell in as he moved towards it, and the three started down a long and dark hallway virtually indiscernible from the previous one. Fennekin always followed close behind him, but he could swear that his tail was brushing a few stray hairs in her coat. Was she following even closer to him than normal? 

Before he could mention anything, he walked into another small room, and after a quick glance around, confirmed that there were no other Pokémon in it. 

“The stairs are in this room!” Yamper exclaimed as they walked in. It was hard to see in the darkness, but a hole of darkness even more dark than the regular floor was in the middle of the room. Unlike the Misty Forest where they had to ascend the mystery dungeon, it seemed that they were going to have to go down in this one. Would that change how the dungeon worked? He hated the thought of it getting even darker as they went down. 

Only one way to find out, he supposed.

_ Dark Cavern _

_ B2F _

Thankfully, the darkness seemed to be the same as the floor above them. That still meant it was frustratingly dark, but at least it didn’t get even worse. Ethan’s eyes were adjusting, even; he still couldn’t see down the hallways very far, but at least he could make out the details of the room they were in better. It was long, probably a few minutes walk from one end to the other, but did not seem to be very wide. The stairs had dropped them down into the middle of the room, so it seemed unlikely that they would be surprised by any Pokémon. Looking around him to make sure that Fennekin and Yamper had come down with him, he set out walking towards the hallway right in front of him. 

“Hey, Fennekin?” he heard Yamper ask. “Are you having trouble seeing Ethan or something?”

“Ethan?” she repeated. “No, I can see him just fine. Why?”

“Well, you’re really close to him. I was just wondering if you were aware.”

“Oh!” she sputtered. “Oh, uh, um, no, I, uh, I, I wasn’t. Sorry!”

“It’s fine,” he replied slowly, not entirely sure what to make of the situation. She sounded almost embarrassed to be that close to him, but Yamper’s tone didn’t really sound like she should be. 

Before Ethan could think much longer on it, he walked into a room much smaller than the previous one, a tight square with a lump of sand in the corner between two different pathways out. The sand was curious, much brighter than the dark earth below them and specked with stripes of...and it moved. Shifted, more like.

“That’s a Sandile!” Yamper sharply whispered behind them. “It’s a ground type, so our electric moves won’t work on it. We’re also all weak to ground types, so we’ll have to be careful. It’s sleeping right now, though, so we have some time to prepare.”

“Can we just walk quietly?” Ethan asked. “We could try to sneak around it so we don’t have to fight.”

Yamper’s response started with a single shake of his head. “Where it is, it’ll hear us no matter how we try to sneak past it.”

“Let’s go back to the other room and find a way around,” Fennekin stated. “If none of our moves are good against it and it’s good against all of us, it seems dangerous to try and fight it.”

“We may have to come here eventually,” Yamper said. “It’s possible that that’s the only way to the stairs.”

“There’s three of us,” Ethan pointed out, “and one of it. And I think I have moves that aren’t electric type?”

“Your Quick Attack is a normal type move! And even if its ground type moves are super effective against me, my fire attacks will do normal damage against it.”

“You know Quick Attack?” Yamper asked, looking at Ethan. “Try hitting that Sandile from a distance, it will probably have to take some time moving towards you and you can hit it in the meantime.”

“I could use Quick Attack and Fennekin could use Ember,” Ethan thought out loud. “Yamper, do you have anything that can hit Pokémon far away?”

“I know Dig, which takes a little bit to work. What you could do is have me go underground, and when that Sandile comes towards you, I can spring up and hit it with an attack!”

“That sounds good.” Ethan took a deep breath, then let it out sharply. “Are you two ready?”

“On you!” Yamper whispered. “As soon as you attack, I’ll go underground. Just make sure to not move closer, because we’re trying to lure the Sandile towards us.”

Ethan responded only with a single quick nod before leaping towards the Sandile, slamming into it before using the pushback to propel himself back to where he started. One ear grew warm as a small ball of fire flew past him, landing squarely on the Sandile’s face. Almost as soon as he steadied himself, the Sandile leapt up and charged towards them. Instinctively, Ethan jumped forward with another Quick Attack. Before Fennekin could even use Ember again, the Sandile quickly turned and ran, almost sinking into the ground with how fast it managed to burrow away.

“Great job, you two!” Ethan heard Yamper exclaim from his right. Apparently, Yamper did not bother to fully get out of the ground, as only half of him was visible sticking out from the dirt. “I didn’t see it, obviously, but you’re here and the Sandile isn’t!”

“That worked really great!” Fennekin beamed. “Ethan, you’re really good at this!”

“I guess,” he admitted. “It helped that we had some time to think and we didn’t have that Sandile right in our faces. Gave us time to think.”

“It’s always important to stop and think,” Yamper responded in an almost professorly tone. “Of course, don’t stop too long, because then you’ll get noticed, or another Pokémon will come along and attack!”

“Speaking of,” Fennekin said, “we should probably get moving. Some other Pokémon might have heard that fight, and I don’t want to have to fight if we don’t need to!”

Ethan nodded his head. “Agreed. We made that plan so we could go down this hallway, so what do you say we go and see where it leads?”

Yamper fell in behind Fennekin. “Take the lead!” 

Slowly, Ethan walked forward through the narrow hallway the Sandile had been sleeping by. Not too slowly, of course, but if that Sandile was sleeping, then what else might be? He’d hate for them to have to retreat or faint because he was careless and disturbed some powerful sleeping Pokémon. Especially with how dark the cave was, they could be anywhere!

Thankfully the hallway was short, and opened up into a small room with no other exits. Nothing was moving at least, so they wouldn’t have to fight anything in here. Right as he thought to turn around and go back, however, his eye caught sight of what appeared to be an area of extra-dark darkness in the corner of the room. Could it be? A smile grew on his face as he walked a few steps closer; the stairs! 

_ Dark Cavern _

_ B3F _

“The stairs!” Fennekin almost squealed as they stepped foot on the next floor of the Dark Cavern.

“Already?” Ethan asked. 

“Where the stairs are is also random,” Yamper explained, “and sometimes you get lucky like we just did! We can look around for items and Pokémon if you want, or we can move on; it’s up to you.”

A quick scan of the room confirmed what Fennekin said; they were in a medium-sized room, and the stairs were about halfway between them and one of the four hallways, one on each side of the room. Maybe there were useful things elsewhere on the floor, but the way he saw it, the three of them had a mission. The sooner they got to it and the fewer chances they had to get ambushed, the better.

_ Dark Cavern _

_ B4F _

“Has it gotten darker?” Ethan asked once Yamper joined them after descending the stairs. He could make out the room they were in, but only barely; small, with two exits, one in front and one behind them. There appeared to be, of all things, an apple near the exit behind them. How did that get all the way down here?

“Some dungeons get darker the further into them you go,” he confirmed. “It was already dark in here, though, so we’ll be used to fighting somewhere we have trouble seeing.”

He supposed that made sense. But first, the apple; who had brought it down here? When he walked up to it and crouched down to inspect it, he heard Fennekin behind him speak up. “Make sure to hold onto that,” she said. “We might get hungry later, and it’ll be good to have food.”

The apple seemed...passable, at least, when he picked it up. Sure it was dusty and didn’t exactly seem fresh, but he could clean the dust off and it wasn’t like it had gone bad. “Will we really be down here that long?”

“Maybe not in here,” Yamper said, “but somewhere else you might be; you could always save the apple for then.”

“Do we need it? The bag Cinccino and Roserade gave us has some berries in there, and we could always eat those instead.”

“An apple will fill you up more,” he explained. “Besides, berries have special properties, like healing your injuries or curing conditions. You’ll want to save those for when you’re in trouble, while an apple you can have whenever you need it.”

Made sense, he supposed. As he put it in their bag, he figured he would go down the path they were already by; not like they had any reason to choose one over the other. Like all the others it was narrow, and partway through made a sharp turn left that Ethan gently peeked down to make sure nothing was waiting right around the corner. Not that he would really be able to see anything, anyways.

The hallway continued along for a while, and as soon as he stepped out into a large room, Ethan felt two attacks slam into him, one on each side.

“There’s two of them!” Fennekin yelled before shooting an Ember at the one to his right. The one she aimed at appeared to be a small, walking stone, and the other a flying purple bat with no eyes. Instinctively he charged up electricity to hit the bat Pokémon, but what types would be effective against it? Usually he relied on Fennekin to tell him. Before he realized it, the electricity flew out of his body, but felt different than before. Whereas Thundershock felt like he threw the electricity at a Pokémon, this felt almost as if it just...leaked out of him. It must’ve done some damage, because the Pokémon’s flying became erratic and it struggled to stay in the air. He felt another attack come from behind, but the one in front was more focused on staying airborne than attacking him.

“You’ve paralyzed it!” Yamper yelled as Ethan felt another hot Ember fly behind him. “Hit it with electric-type moves, now!”

Paralyzed? He wasn’t sure what that was or how he did it, but he did know how to use electric moves. Quickly he charged up and released a Thundershock, and the Pokémon fell right down to the ground, unconscious. More fire behind him, followed by the sounds of running, told him that Fennekin had defeated the other Pokémon. “Are you okay?” she asked, worry clear in her voice.

“I’m fine,” he dismissed, not taking his eyes off the bat Pokémon. “What were those two? I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“That one’s a Zubat,” Yamper explained, “and the other was a Roggenrola. Zubat is a flying type, which is why I told you to use an electric attack.”

Electric was good against flying, good to know. “You said I paralyzed it. What does that mean?”

“That was Thunderwave you used. It doesn’t damage Pokémon, but it slows them down and makes them unable to attack sometimes. It’s very useful to know!”

“Honestly,” he laughed, “I didn’t know that I could do that. Just how many moves can I use?”

“Four is the maximum. If you don’t know what you can use, talk to Luxio when we get back; she’s really smart, so I bet she’ll know all about the moves that Pikachu can use!”

“The stairs!” Fennekin exclaimed. Truth be told, Ethan had forgot to check the room after the fight died down. Sure enough, the stairs were at the opposite end.

_ Dark Cavern _

_ B5F _

“Roggenrola in the corner,” Ethan whispered to Fennekin as she stepped off the stairs next to him. “It looks like it’s sleeping, so we should be able to sneak past it. There’s only one hallway here, and it’s not near it.”

“Look off to the right!” she whispered back. “There’s an item there! I’ll go grab it while you check out the hallway!” Before he could respond, Fennekin began moving her way across the room, each footstep taken gingerly as to not awake the sleeping Pokémon. 

“She’s doing what a lot of explorers do,” Yamper spoke after reading Ethan’s face. “We want to make sure to get whatever useful items we can, but we understand that sticking together is best. We won’t break off during a fight, or if you start leaving the room.”

Fennekin practically skipped over to them, awkwardly holding a small glass bottle in one paw and bounding on the other three. “Check it out, an elixir!”

“Make sure to keep that! We’re probably nearing the end of this dungeon, but like with apples, they’re invaluable in bigger explorations!”

“An elixir?” Ethan echoed as Fennekin handed him the bottle. “What’s that?”

“An elixir restores your strength,” Fennekin smiled. “You can only use any one of your moves so often before you run out of power, and an elixir helps you restore a little bit of strength for all of your moves. Neat, huh?”

“My moves feel fine,” he responded. “Will I know when I can’t use them anymore, or should I be keeping track?”

“You can just kind of…” Ever so slightly, Fennekin bit her lip. “I don’t know, sense it? Like, you learn to feel if you’re running out of power. But a general rule is that the more powerful a move is, the less you can use it before you need to drink an elixir or take a rest outside of a dungeon. I’m sure with more experience, you’ll get more used to feeling these sorts of things!”

“Hopefully we won’t need it and can save it. You said we’re almost near the end, Yamper?”

“I think so. Lampent said it wasn’t very long, and Luxio wouldn’t have wanted to send you on anything too hard for your first mission. I haven’t actually been here before, so this is an adventure for all of us!”

Truthbetold, Ethan wasn’t sure whether that made him more or less confident in the mission. Sure Yamper actually had no idea what they were getting themselves into, but something about that just made him feel...right. At least they were giving them a real mission to do and not just some pointless errand. Plus, he figured that he was going to have to get used to not knowing exactly what he was getting himself into; it sounded like a lot of exploring was like that.

“We’re going to want to keep moving,” Yamper said. “Staying in one place can help heal you a little faster if you’re hurt, but it’s more likely that Pokémon will come up, and the fighting might wake that Roggenrola up.”

Ethan nodded, then entered the narrow hallway leading out of the room. Were these getting more and more narrow as they went down? He could still fit through them thankfully, but he really hoped that they wouldn’t get attacked in such a tight space. 

“Poochyena, right behind us!” Yamper yelled almost as soon as Ethan finished his thought. He managed to turn around, but Fennekin and Yamper still stood between him and the furry, gray Pokémon standing snout-to-snout with Yamper. 

Ethan tried to jump forward in a Quick Attack, but stumbled on his feet after barely squirming past Fennekin and landed face-first in the dirt. “It’s too far!” she yelled before firing an Ember towards it. “We can switch places if you want, but just one of us will be able to help him!”

She was right; there wasn’t enough room for them to stand side by side, so he started rolling back to where he had been and used the momentum to jump to his feet. Once back up, he heard the crackling of electricity, but instead of it shooting out like Thundershock, it seemed to coalesce around his mouth and he lunged forward and bit down. Could he do anything like that? He’d have to ask Yamper later; now was not the time.

“Swap with me,” he ordered Fennekin as the Poochyena retaliated against Yamper with a bite of its own. With just a small nod, she hugged one side of the wall and stepped back while Ethan hugged the other and moved to where she had been. The sound of more electricity announced another attack from Yamper, but when he went to bite the Poochyena, it jumped to the side and deftly avoided the attack. Almost without thinking, Ethan jumped out in another Quick Attack, this time slamming straight into the attacking Pokémon. With a pained whimper, it turned and ran, quickly disappearing into the darkness of the hallway. 

“Nice job, you two!” Yamper exclaimed.

“How are you doing?” Fennekin asked. “It looked like you got attacked by that Poochyena.”

Yamper’s smile grew larger, then he waved his paw dismissively. “I’m fine, it was just one attack!”

“What type of move was that you used?” Ethan asked. “It looked powerful. Could you teach it to me?”

“It was Thunder Fang! I’m no good at teaching Pokémon how to use moves, but you could ask Luxio! She’s really smart, and she’s also an electric type so she might be able to!”

“I thought Pokémon couldn’t teach moves to each other?” Fennekin asked to nobody in particular. “I thought the only way you were able to learn moves was by leveling up or using TMs.”

“Luxio is a really great teacher! Even some Pokémon who aren’t in the Academy come to her to learn moves, and some of them are ones she doesn’t even know.”

He looked at Fennekin, then the two of them both looked to Yamper. “How can you teach a move you don’t know?”

“She’s a really famous and powerful explorer, so she’s seen all types of moves and all types of Pokémon. She’s just super awesome! You’ll have to ask her once we get back, I’ve never learned any moves from her so I don’t know how it works.”

“I wonder what kinds of moves she’d be able to teach me,” Fennekin wondered aloud as she swapped places with Ethan and let him take the lead in the hallway again. “I’ve heard that Delphox can use all types of moves, but I’d have to evolve twice for that. Maybe there are some moves she can teach me now so I don’t have to wait that long until I evolve twice!”

Evolution...that was something Pokémon did, right? He wasn’t sure why he knew that, but it felt like he did. Maybe he learned it when he was a human? It seems like he hadn’t forgotten absolutely everything he used to know, but he didn’t even remember what he didn’t remember. Better than nothing, he supposed, but not really anything he could do with that information.

“Ethan!” Fennekin yelled, snapping him out of his thoughts. “You just walked right past the stairs!”

“Really?” Looking back behind him, he saw that she was right; just a few steps behind him were the stairs, and there was nothing else in the room to even have warranted walking past the stairs for! “Sorry, I spaced out.”

“It’s okay,” she laughed. “At least you didn’t walk right into another Pokémon. Now come on, lead the way!”

_ Dark Cavern Pit _

“This place looks a lot different than the rest of the dungeon,” Fennekin noted as she looked around the large room they were in. Instead of the walls and floor being pure stone and dirt, it looked almost as if this place had been a building before. Smooth, uniform paving stones of varying colors, yellow near the walls and a pattern of light and dark gray in the center, covered the floor, and small rubble piles of white stone told that they lined the walls as well.

“This is so cool!” Yamper exclaimed, bounding from rubble heap to rubble heap. “I’ve never seen anything like this place!”

“Everything looks broken to me,” Ethan said. What was so impressive about that?

Yamper rushed up to one of many mounds of cracked stone and dust, gently pawing a few rocks around. “Imagine what this place used to be! It looks like this must be some ancient city, but who built it? How long ago? Why was it abandoned? Even if there’s no treasure, just being here is a great reward!”

Fennekin was intently studying some of the stones on the wall, so Ethan slowly walked towards Yamper while looking around on his own. Something about the place felt...familiar? That was the wrong word, but he couldn’t think of a better one. He didn’t think he had been here before, but it felt like he had been in places like it. Nothing in particular about the area seemed familiar to him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling. 

“What do you think these holes were?” Fennekin asked as he walked past her. In front of her, a few feet off the ground, was what he could only assume was once a rectangular hole in the stones. All of the stones had fallen down long ago, revealing a cave wall of hard-packed dirt much like the upper levels, but the opening seemed almost too straight to be random. 

“Maybe Pokémon lived here,” he guessed. “It looks like there could’ve been a door there, doesn’t it? And with all of these stones here, this was probably a town.”

“An underground city…” Fennekin trailed off, then squealed in excitement. “That would be so cool! I wonder why they left here?”

“This floor doesn’t seem like a mystery dungeon, maybe they thought it was coming and they ran away to get somewhere safe?”

“I don’t know, these ruins look ancient. From what I heard, mystery dungeons haven’t been appearing for long enough to be the reason why whoever lived here left.”

“Hey, I think I found it!” Yamper yelled from further down the stone street. “Come check this out!”

Ethan and Fennekin looked down the street, finding Yamper standing in front of what appeared to be a doorway leading to another room. Fennekin practically skipped in excitement, but Ethan walked and tried to get a good look at the rest of the road. Why did this place seem familiar? Maybe he lived nearby; that would explain why he woke up near Pokéopolis. Maybe he really had been here, just not for long.

“The map!” Fennekin beamed. He saw the two of them run into the room, so he walked faster to catch up. The cavern had caved in on the street only a few feet in, but what looked like a massive picture frame was hanging on the wall to the right with a small scrap of withering paper in it. “Do you think that’s what we were sent here to find? It seems kind of small.”

“You did say it was just a piece, right? Is this big enough to be the piece you’re looking for?”

“They didn’t say.” Yamper walked up to the frame, then gently took the small piece of paper out and rolled it up. “You two ready to go?”

Fennekin’s ears seemed to droop as she stared at the floor. “Do we have to? I’d love to go explore down here a little bit.”

He seemed to think it over, then looked at the two and smiled. “We made good time, sure. I’ve never been down here either, so let’s see what else we can find!”


	8. Chapter 4 — Outlaws, Part 1

_**Chapter 4 — Outlaws** _

“Ethan!” Helioptile called from down the hallway in the dormitories of the Academy. “Fennekin! There you two are!”

“What?” Fennekin drawled, still half asleep. “What’s up?”

“The Academy meeting’s happening, they’re waiting on you!”

Fennekin practically jumped, almost as if a jolt of electricity shot through her. “Academy meeting?” she echoed, all tiredness in her voice gone as if it was never there. “I didn’t know about any meeting!”

Helioptile placed a hand over her mouth, stifling a giggle. “Yamper was supposed to tell you after your mission yesterday, that explains it. We haven’t been waiting too long, we can walk there together.”

“What’s the meeting for?” Ethan asked as Helioptile turned around and started walking back the way she came. 

“We have a meeting on this day every week, just so they can fill us in on anything that’s happening. They usually don’t last very long, but sometimes they have really important info to give us.”

“What are they saying today?” Fennekin bit her lip, then began almost half-walking half-pacing with them. “Are we missing anything?”

Helioptile turned to Ethan, then let out a few soft giggles. “No, they’re waiting. They don’t want you to miss anything.”

It wasn’t a long walk to the main room of the fourth floor, but it was a much different sight than it had been the past few days; Pokémon of all different shapes and sizes filled the room, and Ethan only recognized a few of them; Roserade was standing in front of the crowd, and Cinccino was further back towards the stairs. He found Yamper, Aipom, and Emolga in the crowd, but they were all talking with Pokémon he didn’t recognize. He could see now that it wasn’t a huge crowd, maybe about a dozen Pokémon total including him and Fennekin, but it was still overwhelming since he didn’t know most of them.

“Everybody’s here!” Roserade spoke from the front of the crowd, almost instantly causing all side conversations to cease and look at her. She didn’t exactly yell, but her voice was strong and clear, and even though she was not much taller than some of the Pokémon in the crowd, something about her made her seem to be almost looming over them. 

“Thank you,” she continued, her voice quieter but still firm and clear. “Now, as I’m certain you’re all aware, we have two new recruits to the Academy: Ethan and Fennekin, of Team Stargazers. Some of you have already met them, but for those who have not, we will be relying on you to help them when they need it, and we will be directing them to many of you either to aid their explorations or have them aid yours.”

As she was speaking, Luxio seemed to almost appear out of nowhere on the top few steps, exchanging small smiles with Cinccino before very fluidly and gracefully standing next to him. Why was she downstairs? Perhaps she was updating the missions on the ground floor, or preparing the arena for another exercise with them today. Whatever it was, he hadn’t heard any indication that someone was on the creaky stairs of the Academy.

“Second,” Roserade with an almost smug smile, “an update on the mentorship program. Having two new members has made us need to look for another team, although we have one that has said they would be very excited to work with our newest members; we are finalizing details with them now. We are hoping to introduce you all to your mentors at the next meeting.”

“Mentors?” Fennekin whispered to Helioptile. “What’s she talking about?”

“They’re finding real exploration teams who’ve agreed to help us out and teach us what they know,” she explained. “They’re even finding ones that are good at certain things that we do well so they can help us become even better!”

“That concludes this morning’s meeting,” Roserade finished. “Good luck, all of you!” 

“What do we do now?” Ethan asked Helioptile as most of the Pokémon went towards the stairs or started looking for others in the crowd.

“You two!” Luxio called out before she could answer. She was walking towards them, flanked by two Pokémon. The one on the right, a round, dark blue Pokémon with what appeared to almost be a flower on its head had...drool, coming out of its mouth. Was it polite to not look, or was it rude to not look? He settled for looking at the one on Luxio’s left, which was pale pink and seemed almost like it was walking with its pastel blue hat instead of its legs that dangled just above the ground. “Yamper told me your mission yesterday went well. How do you two feel?”

He and Fennekin exchanged sideways glances with each other, both apparently not wanting to be the first to say something. What was it about Luxio that was so intimidating? “I think it went well,” he admitted. 

“Yeah,” was all Fennekin responded with.

“Good,” she smiled before gesturing to the Pokémon on the right. “This is Gloom, and you’ll be helping him today with a mission.” She looked to the Pokémon on the left. “But first, I asked Hattrem to show you our library and help you learn how to prepare for missions.”

“Hi!” Hattrem beamed, almost bouncing in her strange hat-leg configuration. “It’s so nice to meet you, it’s been a while since we had a new recruit!”

“H-hi…” Gloom said with a very slight and shaky wave.

“I’ll let you all get to it,” Luxio said as she turned around. “Make sure to fill them in on your mission, Gloom.”

Fennekin looked to Hattrem and Gloom, then smiled warmly. “Nice to meet you two! What’s the mission Luxio wants to help you with, Gloom?”

“A bounty…” He seemed to shiver out of fear, and shifted uneasily on his feet. “I just hope it goes well.”

“Bounty?” Ethan asked. “What does that mean?”

“A bounty mission is a mission to take down a lawbreaker,” Hattrem spoke, almost as if reciting something from memory. “The sheriff in town works with the Exploration Society to help take down criminals outside of Pokéopolis by issuing bounty missions. Sometimes individual Pokémon will issue them as well against Pokémon who’ve robbed or attacked them, but they all involve tracking another Pokémon down and defeating them in battle.”

Worry seemed to grow on Fennekin’s face, although not as intense as Gloom’s. “Taking down a criminal? An actual criminal?”

“Luxio wouldn’t have given us a mission she doesn’t think we could do, right?” Ethan asked. “How hard are these missions usually, Hattrem? And Gloom, did she say how difficult this was going to be?”

Hattrem thought it over, while Gloom nervously rubbed his hands together. “She said it would be a good mission to bring you two along on.”

“They’re no harder than an exploration mission, I guess,” she responded uneasily. “It’s hard to say. Some Pokémon have an easier time with bounty missions, and some do better at explorations. I think that’s why Luxio’s sending you with Gloom; he’s really strong!”

Color rushed to Gloom’s face after Hattrem’s comment. “I’m not really all that strong.”

“Gloom’s super strong,” Hattrem winked. “He’s just really modest! He even helped me learn about bounty missions when I was starting out.”

“Are you coming along with us?” Fennekin asked.

Hattrem shook her head. “No, Luxio wants me to show you the library and give you a journal. It’s downstairs, let’s go!”

“Journal?” Ethan asked. “What kind of journal, and for what?”

Gloom turned around and started walking towards the stairs, and Hattrem did the same so Ethan and Fennekin followed. “It’s to help you keep track of your explorations,” she explained. “It’ll make sense when you see it.”

“What’s in the library?” Fennekin asked. “I’ve never been to one. It’s like, a lot of books, right?”

“Never even been?” Hattrem exclaimed. “Are you not from Pokéopolis? They have a lot of books, yes, but they’re also places for Pokémon to come together, do research, and trade knowledge. The one in the Academy is open to any official exploration team to use, and sometimes they’re willing to share their discoveries or trade items!”

She smiled, but it seemed somewhat uneasy. “That sounds like fun! What kinds of research do you do there?” Ethan wasn’t sure why, but he noted that she didn’t answer Hattrem’s question of where she was from. He knew she wasn’t from Pokéopolis, of course, but she sounded nervous responding and mentioning nothing. He was probably just looking too much into it, but he couldn’t shake the feeling.

“I love just studying everything there is to know about exploring, from moves and strategies to different places people have explored. If you have any questions about how to prepare for a mission or an exploration, I’d be happy to help!” Hattrem led the group down the stairs to the third floor, then went to the room on the right, opposite the training yard where they met Luxio yesterday. “Go on in,” she said, standing beside the door and gesturing towards it.

Ethan and Fennekin looked at each other, then he shrugged and opened the door to let her in first; she did seem kind of excited to see it, after all. He was too, but being an explorer had been her dream, so he figured even little things she should get to experience first.

She walked into the library. “Oh, wow!” she half yelled before even getting fully through the doorway. “I’m surprised you can fit so much in here, there must be thousands of books!” Ethan peeked inside, and she was right; even though the room was no larger than the small training yard they were yesterday, shelves encircled the room, each one of them packed to the brim. He wondered how anybody was supposed to take a book out without having the whole row pop out with it. A few small tables were in the middle of the room, nearly all of them stacked high with books and papers. It wasn’t hard to see why Pokémon even outside of the Academy would come to use this.

“If you want it,” Hattrem said as she walked in, “we probably have it here! I have your journal on that table near the back, the one without a ton of stuff on it. Go on, check it out!”

They walked over to the one table that wasn’t just a mass of paper, a lone book and a small wooden case on it. On both, in very clean looping letters: Team Stargazers. 

“Your journal is where you can keep track of where you’ve been and all of your missions,” Hattrem explained as Ethan opened the book to the first page. It was blank, but had plenty of boxes and spaces for all sorts of information. Dungeon name, location, floors, Pokémon encountered, even a spot for their accepted missions. “That box also has some writing utensils, so you can fill it in. Just make sure to not write your missions in pen so you can erase them once you’re done! You’ll want to be able to add and erase them once you’ve completed them.”

“We’ll probably want to write down everything about the Misty Forest and Dark Cavern,” Ethan thought out loud. “Or are we able to get it from someone else? Will they share?”

“Anyone in the Academy shares what they have with everyone else. Most other exploration teams are willing to share, but they might ask for something in return; money, items, or they might have a mission they need you to do. If they have a really rare find, though, they probably won’t share it with just anyone. It’s no hard feelings; we’re all explorers, after all! We understand that sometimes you need to keep something to yourself until you can get enough to pay off your hard work.”

“I can probably fill in a lot of what we did in those dungeons,” Fennekin interrupted. “I have a really good memory for that kind of stuff! Would we have time for me to fill it out, Gloom?”

Gloom flinched, almost as if not expecting someone to address him, then rubbed his hands together nervously. “I don’t know. Why don’t we just plan to go tomorrow? You two can take as long as you need to till that out, and then we can—”

“I can fill it out on the road!” Fennekin chirped. “I’d hate for you to have to put your mission off because of us! Besides, if it’s a bounty mission, I’d want to make sure we can go after this outlaw quickly.”

“Are you sure?” Gloom asked. “I wouldn’t mind waiting for you two.”

“You’ll be fine, Gloom,” Hattrem giggled. “He just gets nervous, he doesn’t know how strong he is.”

“We’ll be fine since we’re all together!” Fennekin beamed. “We’re chasing an outlaw, let’s not lose a second more!”


	9. Chapter 4 — Outlaws, Part 2

“This is really thorough,” Ethan thought out loud as he looked at the journal page for the Misty Forest. “When did we fight a Caterpie? What type of Pokémon is that?”

“It was during one of my trips through the forest on my own,” Fennekin explained. “I told you I had a good memory for explorations!”

“I like it,” he replied as he closed the book, fastening it to the toolbox with a strap. “You really seem to have this exploring thing down.”

Almost instantly, Fennekin turned her head away from him, face turning as red as the hair in her ears as she did so. “No, I’m still really new. I’ve just read a lot of stories about famous explorers and was really excited to become one myself. But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Don’t tell anyone what?” Gloom asked from behind them. Why Gloom wasn’t in the lead, Ethan wasn’t sure; either he wanted to give them the experience of having to find a dungeon, or he was too nervous to be in charge. It was one of those. Or both.

“It’s nothing!” Fennekin nervously laughed.

“It’s a good question,” Ethan pointed out. “Why not? You’ve done your research, that should be a good thing, right? You’ll have a better idea of what to expect.”

“I guess,” she sighed, voice quieter than before. “I don’t know. Where I grew up, Pokémon don’t really...go become explorers. Everyone I knew thought it was stupid that I wanted to be one. They’d all rather stay put and keep doing what they’re doing than go out and get other Pokémon out of danger! Sometimes I wonder if this is really going to have an impact on anything…”

What came next wasn’t quite silence, but more...stillness. How was he supposed to respond to something like that? Without even really thinking, he reached out and patted her on the shoulder a few times. “Thank you,” she spoke, barely more than a whisper. “This has just been my dream for as long as I can remember, and I can hardly believe I’m actually in an exploration team now. Sure this is our second mission ever, but I’m literally living my dream! I always thought that was an expression. What about you? What have you always wanted to do?”

“...uh-”

“Oh.” More silence. “Sorry, I forgot.”

He laughed a little bit. Why was he laughing? It wasn’t exactly a funny situation. “It’s fine. I just don’t know, you know? I probably did have dreams, but if I did, I can’t remember them anymore. I’ll just make new dreams, I guess.”

“Make new dreams? Are you sure? Just...start over?”

He shrugged. “I kind of already have started over so sure, why not? The life of an explorer seems like fun, so I guess my dream could be to be a really great explorer or something. Maybe we could chase that dream together.”

“Together…” A small smile appeared on her face. “That sounds really nice. Yeah, l like that dream! What do you say we try and make it to Grandmaster rank?”

“Is that the highest?”

“Yeah! Only a handful of Pokémon have ever gotten there, but we can totally try our best! I bet if we really buckle down and do our best, we can make it!”

“It’s a deal. Even if we don’t make it quite there, I bet we can get one of the really high ranks. What rank was it that Roserade and Cinccino were?”

“Emerald rank; it’s also the rank my favorite team ever, Team Moondancers, is! Could you imagine if we were just as good as them? That would be so cool!”

“Team Moondancers?” Gloom asked, hurriedly running up to join Ethan and Fennekin. “Did you know Luxio used to be one of their members?”

“You’re kidding!” she exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “She doesn’t mention it a ton, but she was in their team before she retired to help Roserade and Cinccino at the Academy.”

“Good for us, I guess,” Ethan spoke up. “It makes sense why she could take a direct attack from both of us, if she was in a team that’s Emerald rank. Who else is in that team?”

“There’s Meowstic,” Fennekin began explaining, “she’s the leader. They say she’s really determined, and will find a way to succeed at any exploration they go on. Then there’s Lopunny; she’s super smart, and has gotten them out of a lot of tough situations before. And finally there’s Mawile, and they say she’s the nicest Pokémon ever and won’t stop until everyone is safe and happy!”

As he was about to respond, Ethan saw Gloom point at something ahead out of the corner of his eye. “There’s the entrance. Are you ready? We should probably double check everything and go over the mission details again…”

“There’s no time!” Fennekin interjected. “We’re hunting a dangerous criminal, we need to move quickly! We checked everything before we left Pokéopolis, and these criminals are really good at getting away when they want to.”

What sounded like almost a pained moan came from Gloom. “If you say so…”

_ Windy Cliffs  _

_ 1F _

Thankfully, the inside of this dungeon was much different than the Dark Cavern; namely, Ethan could actually see well in here. He could even see down the hallways! Well, the one hallway that led out of the small room they were in turned so he couldn’t see the next room, but at least it was nowhere near as dark as their other mission had been.

“You can take point,” Gloom mumbled as he fell in behind Fennekin. “It’ll, uh...help you get better at learning how to take charge in your own missions.” He felt bad about taking over others’ missions so often, but he supposed it was good training. Even if it sounded like Gloom didn’t actually want to lead.

Ethan started leading the group forward, and before he was able to even get into the hallway, a small gray Pokémon came flying around the corner, then saw them and glared as it continued flying. “A Pidove!” Gloom panicked. “Grass types like me are no good against flying types, but you should be, Ethan! Move forward if you need to, but you can always wait and let it come to you so you don’t get hurt.”

Ethan took a few steps forward, then started accumulating electricity in his body. It took a while for the Pidove to come close to him — better to be too cautious than too reckless — but as soon as it got close to him, he set off a Thundershock as Fennekin used Ember on it. Almost simultaneously both attacks hit true, causing it to turn around and fly away faster than it flew towards them. “You two are so strong!” he heard Gloom beam from behind them. In his heightened concentration, he noticed that Gloom hadn’t even moved; Fennekin was next to him, but Gloom seemed to be trying to put Ethan between himself and any Pokémon that could have come down the hallway. He supposed he could understand that, given Gloom was weak to flying types.

Eyes focused on the bend in the hallway to notice any oncoming Pokémon, Ethan cautiously walked into the hallway. After following the hook to the left, eventually the group came to a T intersection. Should he go to the right, or stay on the path they were on? He couldn’t see any rooms down either path, so he figured to just keep on walking straight.

The hallway continued and turned left again, leading into a dead end room with another Pidove in it, this time sleeping on the far wall of a small rectangular room. “Couple of items,” he whispered to Fennekin. “You go get that elixir, and I’ll grab the oran berry?” Her only response was a single nod, and before long, the group found themselves back in the hallway.

As they were reaching the T, a small green Pokémon flapped its way into their section of the hallway, causing him to grind to a halt and put out a hand behind him to stop Fennekin and Gloom. It turned to its left, flying away from them towards the room they entered in. “It didn’t see us. What type of Pokémon was that, anyways?”

“It was a Natu,” Fennekin responded. “Flying and psychic type.”

“Psychic,” he thought aloud as he lead the group down the hallway the Natu had come from. “That’s not super effective against either of us, right?”

“Right!” Fennekin beamed. “You’re learning quickly. Although Gloom is part poison, so it would be super effective against him.”

“I’m also a grass type, so flying moves would hurt me a lot too.” 

“We’ll keep you safe,” Fennekin responded in a very reassuring voice.

“Electric type moves are good against flying types! I remembered that one for sure. Gloom, what are your types good against?”

“There’s the stairs…” Gloom meekly pointed out as they all walked into a small room, stairs in the corner. There was another exit across the room from them, but with the stairs in the corner, Ethan decided to just head to them and start walking up.

_ Windy Cliffs  _

_ 2F _

“So what are grass and poison type moves good against?” Ethan asked again as Fennekin and Gloom climbed up the stairs after him. “Grass is good against ground, right? I remember Fennekin telling me that since we’re both weak to ground types.”

“Ground, rock, and water,” Gloom rattled off without even thinking on it. “And poison type attacks are good against grass and fairy types.”

“I bet you’re as strong as Hattrem claims you are, with all of that knowledge!” Fennekin beamed. 

Ethan picked up an oran berry by the stairs, putting it inside of their bag before heading towards the room exit. “I’ve just been at the Academy a while, I’m not that strong. Yamper’s stronger than me, you know him. Vibrava’s beat me in a battle once or twice, too. And I’ve heard Dewpider is really tough, even though he’s new…”

“Come on,” she insisted, “I bet you’re really strong! What’s the toughest Pokémon you’ve ever beaten?”

“Well, a Gigalith, but—”

“A Gigalith?” she exclaimed; she jumped in shock, knocking Ethan into the wall of the room and nearly causing him to fall over. “Oh my gosh, are you okay?”

Some dust and a few stone flakes got onto him, but he brushed himself off a few times. “Yeah, I’m fine. What’s so impressive that made you jump up like that, anyways? Is a Gigalith really that strong?”

“They’re super strong! I bet you could tell us that, though, Gloom! How did you manage to defeat it?”

“It wasn’t just me!” he yelped. “Aipom was with me too. And we had been chasing it all the way to the dungeon so it was tired…”

“We managed to beat Aipom just the other day,” Ethan chuckled. “I mean, that sounds mean, but we were just starting out. Besides, I don’t think Luxio would have us go along with you if you weren’t strong, right? It sounds like we’ll need all of our strength against this outlaw. What Pokémon are we going to be fighting, anyways?”

As the group entered a small room with another exit on the left wall. Gloom motioned for Ethan and Fennekin to come close to him. “I’ll show you,” he said, taking a rolled-up piece of parchment out of his own bag. On it, the image of a spider-like Pokémon took up the majority of the page, with a bounty listed below: 2,000 Poké! Actually, was that a lot? Ethan wasn’t sure.

“An Ariados?” Fennekin asked. “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard! After all, I’m a fire type, and none of us will be weak to it!”

Gloom seemed to clutch the paper in nervousness. “They say he’s really strong, though. And not only is he tough, he has lots of nasty effects he can do to you like holding you in place and poisoning you! Well, I can’t be poisoned, but you two can.”

“I’ve never heard of an Ariados,” Ethan said as he turned the poster slightly towards himself to get a better look. “It looks like a bug type?”

“Bug and poison,” Fennekin confirmed. “None of us are weak to those types, though, so we should be good!”

“But only Fennekin resists either of them,” Gloom pointed out. “And both of those types are really good at making a battle really tough, so just make sure to be safe.”

Ethan nodded understandingly. “There’s also three of us and one of him. I agree we should be cautious, but just stay calm and we’ll have a good shot at winning, right? Especially if Fennekin can use her fire-type moves on him.”

“Yeah!” she beamed. “I’m sure we’ll be fine so long as we’re all together, Gloom!”

“I hope so.” His voice contained a slight moan as he rolled up the wanted poster and stuck it back in his own bag. “I really don’t like bounty missions, they’re always really tough and scary. I hope with you two it won’t be that hard.”

“Just make sure to stick together, and do what we do best. Now come on, we should probably get moving; I don’t want Ariados to get away.” With that the group all nodded amongst themselves, Gloom more hesitantly than the others, and fell back in towards the room exit. 

The hallway was long, Ethan could see that. It went for a good ways down, then turned left and soon came to a fork, one path going left and the other continuing on straight. He decided to go left, and at the end walked into a small dead-end room with a Natu sleeping in the corner and a small pile of gold coins next to one of the walls. “That’s Poké!” Fennekin whispered to him. “It doesn’t look like there’s a lot there, but that’s money we can use in Pokéopolis. There should be a small pocket inside the exploration bag that we can use to hold any money that we find.”

The coins jangled in Ethan’s hands as he scooped them up, a small amount of loose dirt and dust coming along with them. He wasn’t quite sure what he could use the money to buy, but it was worth having, he supposed.

Back at the fork, Ethan turned back left and continued along the hallway. A short while later he came to another fork, path branching off the same direction as before, although this time a small gray Pokémon with large ears hopping straight towards them. 

“It’s a Bunnelby,” Fennekin said, peeking her head around the corner. “Normal type.”

After a quick nod in recognition, Ethan leapt forward with a Quick Attack, but as he lunged to hit the Bunnelby, saw it move to his peripheral. Shifting his weight ever so slightly, he instead landed on his feet and came to a sudden stop in the dirt. His shins ached from the sudden change in momentum, but there was no time; he jumped back to where he had been, and the Bunnelby closed in on him.

Instinctively, Ethan surged electricity through his body and shot it out. The Bunnelby hopped to the side again, but not before he could see a splash of fire hit it, presumably from Fennekin’s Ember. That was something, he supposed, but—

His thoughts were interrupted by two rapid strikes across his face, sending him backwards and nearly knocking Fennekin over. It looked ready to attack again and he needed some time to think, so he used Thunder Wave, squarely hitting it and causing it to almost freeze in place. “What was that?” he asked.

“Doubleslap!” Fennekin yelled before shooting out another Ember; the Bunnelby was barely able to move, but was still able to avoid the ball of fire flying towards it. Soon after, however, a small cloud of leaves flew past him, striking the Bunnelby all over and causing it to fall face-down on the ground.

“It’s just fainted, right?” he asked.

“It looks like it’ll be fine,” she confirmed before turning around to look at Gloom. “Was that Razor Leaf? That was really strong, and it looked like a critical hit!”

Gloom put his hands together, fidgeting. “That Bunnelby was already pretty hurt, I’m sure your Ember would’ve done the same.”

“I’m just glad you managed to knock it out,” Ethan said as he carefully stepped over the Bunnelby’s body, careful to not hurt it any more than it likely already was. “What was that attack it used on me? It managed to hit me twice before I could even do anything.”

Fennekin hopped over the Bunnelby, landing right next to Ethan. “Doubleslap. Some moves you can use really quickly, so you’re able to get a couple of hits in before your opponent can do anything. They’re not as powerful as some other moves, but they make up for it by letting you attack more.”

“I see. And how was it able to dodge all of our attacks?”

“Some Pokémon are just good at avoiding attacks; that’s part of adventuring. And part of the fun; you have to be on your toes and know how to get around whatever your foes will throw at you! And just like how they can dodge attacks, you’re also able to.”

After Gloom stepped over the Bunnelby, looking almost guilty as he did so, they continued down the hallway. It turned right after not too long, eventually leading to another small dead-end room like the previous one, an apple in the corner right next to the stairs. No other Pokémon were in the room, so he picked up the apple and threw it in their bag before climbing up the stairs.

_ Windy Cliffs _

_ 3F _

As soon as Ethan got to the next floor, he saw not only the stairs, but two Pokémon on opposite sides of the room; to his left, near the stairs, a blue and black flying Pokémon, and to the right a tan and furry one on four legs.

“A Corvisquire and Lillipup,” Fennekin said as she came up behind him. “We can go right to the stairs, or try and fight them. Your choice.”

Either way, he decided to go left, towards the stairs and Corvisquire; he was going to end up at the stairs anyways, so may as well go towards them regardless of choice. As they got closer, Gloom fell in next to him, and as soon as they came face to face with the Corvisquire, it lunged towards Gloom and slapped him with one of its wings, sending him back a few inches and to his knees.

“Gloom!” Fennekin cried out, moving behind Ethan. He shot a Thundershock at it, followed quickly by an Ember from Fennekin. Both attacks hit it dead on, causing it to turn and fly away.

“I’m fine!” he responded through gritted teeth, slowly getting to his feet. “To the stairs, before that Lillipup can catch up!”

_ Windy Cliffs _

_ 4F _

They exited the stairs into a small room, devoid of other Pokémon. “Are you alright?” Ethan asked as he walked to Gloom, who was still breathing heavily.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “That was a Wing Attack, which is super-effective against me since I’m a grass type. This is what I was worried about…”

Ethan rummaged through the bag, finding an oran berry and handing it to Gloom. “We survived it, that’s all that counts. Hopefully this berry makes you feel better, take a few moments if you need.”

“Really?” he panted as he took a few nibbles of the oran berry. “Thank you. I’m sorry about the fight downstairs, I could’ve gone down.”

“Come on Gloom, you didn’t, and that’s what’s important, right? And you’ve helped out in fights, plus just with leading us in here. What’s there to be sorry for? It could’ve easily been me being attacked.”

A small smile grew on his face. “I guess you’re right. It’s just that grass types are weak to a lot of different moves, so I feel like I’m letting everyone down whenever I go on missions with them.”

Fennekin came up and gently rubbed him on the shoulder. “We’ve seen a lot of normal types, too; it’s not like every Pokémon here is one that you’d be weak to.”

“We’re here for Ariados,” Ethan reminded them. “It doesn’t matter if a fight isn’t the greatest for us, so long as we can get to him and finish the mission. Right?”

Gloom’s smile almost hesitantly grew larger. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve got your backs! Just so long as you have mine for any flying types…”

“Deal,” he laughed before taking a quick look around the room. Three exits: two in front of them, and one to their right. It looked like the two on the same wall turned opposite directions and became hallways of their own, so they had options. He wasn’t sure where any of them lead, so he decided on the one to their right. 

“Hey, Ethan?” Gloom asked as they were walking down the hallway.

“Yeah?”

“Are you sure you’re new to exploring? You just seem really confident, like you already know what you’re doing. Luxio and I let you lead this so you could learn, but it doesn’t feel like you’re a trainee with how you’re leading us.”

The hallway opened up to a small room, one exit on the left, with a pink berry in the center and a Bunnelby sleeping a few steps away. Silently putting a finger to his lips, Ethan carefully walked to the berry and picked it up; it felt soft, almost as if just holding it could bruise it, and it didn’t feel as if anything was inside of it. He’d ask Fennekin or Gloom later what it was; for now, he settled for putting it in his bag and walking to the hallway. After taking a few steps, he looked behind him, seeing the other two following right behind him.

“I just feel like there are decisions that have to be made,” he continued once he felt confident their talking wouldn’t wake the sleeping Bunnelby. “Sorry, talking about what you said earlier, Gloom. But I just feel like if we don’t decide anything, we could be in serious trouble or fail our mission.”

The hallway turned to the left. “I guess...but not just that, you seem so comfortable with everything! Battles, that room back there, even when you were telling me it was fine that I got hit really hard. I’m sure some of the other trainees would’ve yelled at me about that…”

The hallway turned left again, dropping them in a room with an exit on the left and another to their right on the same wall they came out of. “This looks familiar,” Fennekin thought aloud. “I think this is the same room we came onto this floor from!”

Ethan shrugged, then turned right. “Guess there’s only one way out. But Gloom, would you yell at me if I got hit with a ground type attack and got really hurt?”

Gloom smiled and let out what sounded like a small sigh of relief. “Yeah, you’re right. By the way, when we find Ariados, if we have to fight him...do you want me to be up front? Fighting poison types can be really hard if you’re not also a poison type.”

“That would be really great!” Fennekin exclaimed as they walked into the hallway, before Ethan could even respond. “I’ve been poisoned before, and it is not fun! With you there, we’ll have no problem taking him down!”

“Well, I don’t know about that…”

“I’m a fire type, and Ariados is a bug type. And if you can’t get poisoned, it’ll be really easy! Even if your grass and poison type moves don’t do a lot to Ariados, you’ll be able to take some of his attacks a lot better than we can.”

“You’re okay with me not doing a lot of damage to him and letting you two do most of it? I’ll do what I can, but both bug and poison types resist grass and poison moves so I’ll hardly be doing anything to him…”

“There’s more to battling than just doing damage! Let me and Ethan focus on that, since you can avoid his poison you’ll be really valuable in making sure he can’t take us down with it.”

The group entered the next room, a small one with a short, gray Pokémon on the other end walking towards them. Very cautiously, Ethan took a few steps closer to it, then jumped into a Quick Attack once it got close enough. The attack landed head on; using the momentum from the attack, he jumped back and ran to where he had been, Gloom’s Razor Leaf flying over his head as he did so. By the time he could look back, the Pokémon was already fleeing, quickie going out of sight.

“That was a Machop,” Fennekin said, anticipating Ethan’s question. “I don’t think we’ve fought any fighting types before, but it’s okay; none of us are weak to them!”

Thankfully there were no other Pokémon in the room, but there was also little else at all. A small hallway led out of the room to their right, but that was all; only one way to go, he supposed.

The hallway was fairly short, and in what seemed like no time they walked into another small room, the stairs in a corner and two Pokémon inside of it; a Bunnelby in the corner near the stairs, and a gray flying one with some red on its face closer to where they were. He wasn’t sure what Pokémon it was, but it was flying, which told him that his electric attacks would be a good choice. He lept into a Quick Attack as it was getting close, but with a strong flap of its wings it flew up and over him, dodging before shooting down and attacking him with its beak. It landed on his side, and while it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it might have, out of the corner of his eye he saw it grab an oran berry out of his bag and quickly chew before swallowing. 

Ethan rolled to the side, using the momentum to spring to his feet quickly and send out a Thundershock; this time, the attack landed true, and with a critical hit as well since the Pokémon fell to the ground. There was no time to waste, so he started walking to the Bunnelby; Fennekin was already next to it, jumping forward and hitting it with a Scratch attack; Gloom was not far behind.

The Bunnelby lunged to hit her with a Doubleslap, but she dodged the first attack; the second, however, it adjusted right near the end to still land a hit on her. Just as Gloom showed up, her ears lit up as she launched an Ember, which was quickly joined by some orange sludge from the flower on top of Gloom’s head, causing the Bunnelby to turn and run.

“I think that Pokémon ate one of our berries,” Ethan noted. “And what Pokémon even was that? I’ve never seen any others go for items in our bag.”

“Was that a poison attack?” Fennekin asked. 

Gloom looked back and forth between the two, unsure of who to answer first. “Well, the Pokémon was a Tranquill, and that looked like Pluck. And that was Acid, Fennekin. It can sometimes lower a Pokémon’s defenses, which is why I used it; I figured Fennekin might’ve needed some help. But I didn’t realize how much damage she had already done to it!”

“I think that was you,” she laughed. “You’re really strong, Gloom! Every time you’ve helped us, you’ve managed to do a ton of damage. Now I know why Hattrem was saying you were a good Pokémon to adventure with.”

“Th-thanks…” He looked at both of them, then smiled widely. “You two are really nice, I’m glad Luxio had us go on this mission together. I don’t know if I could help, but if you two need me in the future, I can try to come and help you. It’s the least I can do for some friends.”

“I feel the same way! The more we help each other the better we’ll all get, right? That’s part of why I wanted to join the Academy and not just register as an explorer on my own.”

“It would be really nice if I ever have another exploration with a lot of flying types to fight, since those are the ones I seem to get attacked by a lot. But first, we have to take down Ariados!” He took a few steps towards the stairs, then stopped and slowly turned back to Ethan. “Sorry, you’re leading this exploration. I’ll let you go ahead.”

Ethan smiled while shaking his head slightly. “You’re fine Gloom, and you’re right anyways. We’re here to get Ariados, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

_ Windy Cliffs Summit _

“This can’t be it,” Fennekin said as she followed Ethan up the stairs to a very large, circular room with no hallways leading out from it. “There’s nobody here! Do you think the information was wrong?”

Ethan looked around the room; she was right, there was absolutely nothing there. “Maybe there’s something we’re missing? Like a hidden staircase or something?” He walked to the center of the room, but still nothing caught his eye; it didn’t look like any stairs were buried in the walls, and—

Before he even knew it, he was pinned to the ground, and right on top of him was...Gloom? “Are you okay?” Gloom asked. 

“What happened?”

“He’s on the ceiling!” Fennekin exclaimed. 

Gloom got off Ethan, then extended a hand and helped him up. “He tried to use Toxic on you from up there, but I can’t get poisoned so I blocked it.” As he got to his feet, he looked up and saw a red Pokémon with plenty of yellow and purple legs descending from the ceiling on a strand of spider silk so thin it was practically invisible. 

“Three of you?” it asked as it landed on the ground. “Doesn’t matter; I’ve outrun the Society this long, and you’ll be no different!” 

“We’ll see about that!” Fennekin yelled back at him. “We’re Team Stargazers, and we’re here to arrest you once and for all!”

“Fine, I’ll just knock you out then.” Ariados’ shadow seemed to...shift was the best word, and elongated towards Ethan before rising out of the floor and hitting him head on. What kind of move was that? No time to think or ask; he was too far away to use Quick Attack, so he moved closer on the left while Gloom did the same on the right. Fennekin took a deep breath, the crackling fire of her Ember seeming even larger than normal as it landed right in Ariadios’ face. A critical hit! But he shook it off, then looked at Ethan and leapt forward and bit him right on the arm. It didn’t even look like he had been hurt by Ember!

Instinctively, he shot a Thundershock at it, causing it to release his arm. Another Ember came from Fennekin, this time hitting Ariados in the side, and a couple of seeds flew out of Gloom’s flower and instantly wrapped it in a network of vines. What type of attack was that? They quickly pulsed bright green, and it looked like it was in pain from them. Ariados turned around and tried to bite Gloom, but he managed to jump out of the way. 

Less electricity let out from Ethan this time as he used Thunder Wave, but even though Ariados wasn’t looking at him, its legs all scuttled to the side as it dodged it. He was quick, even scurrying out of the way of Fennekin’s Ember just a split second later!

Suddenly, Ariados seemed to slow down, and fell on the ground. Was it knocked out? There was a fine, light blue powder all over its body; was that some super-effective move Gloom used?

“I used Sleep Powder,” he hastily explained as the vines glowed bright green again. “He’s asleep, but not for long. Hit him now!”

“Right,” he responded with a single nod of his head before charging up another Thundershock. This time he hit Ariados head on, and both Fenneklin’s Ember and Gloom’s Acid did the same. He went in for another Thundershock, and after it hit, he could see Ariados’ eyes crack open ever so slightly. But that was all it took, it seemed, since it planted one of its front legs in the ground and quickly spun around, knocking Ethan and Gloom back and dodging another Ember from Fennekin. 

“Fine,” it growled, “you beat me. But you can’t take me back!” With speed he had never seen before, Ariados ran away from them towards the wall. 

“He’s getting away!” Fennekin yelled. “Go after him!”

Before he could even start moving, a dark purple arrow zoomed across Ethan’s vision, hitting Ariados and causing almost ghostly chains to erupt out of the ground and bind his legs. Ariados struggled, but it was all in vain; whatever that had been, it had stopped him in his tracks. As he looked to where the arrow had come from, he saw a strange Pokémon standing at the entrance to the room; it was tall, and although it looked like a bird Pokémon, it stood on two legs. Its tan wings covered most of its body, and green feathers around its head made it look almost like it was wearing a cloak. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Decidueye,” he responded in a deep yet somehow soft voice as he walked up to them. “I was hunting Ariados too; it’s a good thing I showed up when I did, otherwise he would’ve gotten away. I heard he had escaped from numerous Exploration Teams before and figured I should bring him in.” As he came up to Fennekin, he stopped and looked at her for a few moments. “What’s your name?”

“Fennekin,” she barely managed to squeak out, almost backing down from him. “Why?”

“Hmm.” He continued walking up to Ariados, but did not stop at either Ethan or Gloom. “It is probably best if we all bring him back to Pokéopolis for justice. He’s very quick and crafty; and if I’m not mistaken, you’re trainees at the Academy, are you not? I would hate for you to return empty-handed.”

“Yeah,” Ethan nodded. “I guess it would be nice to have help escorting him back.” Decidueye picked Ariados up, and the shackles adjusted themselves to bind his legs together; he could still walk, but with visibly more difficulty than he had previously. 

Without a word, Decidueye started walking towards the exit with Ariados. Fennekin ran up to Ethan and Gloom, and the group started following him. “He’s kinda weird, isn’t he?” she asked.

Ethan nodded. “Yeah. He seemed interested in you, and almost a little surprised when you said who you were. Do you know him?”

“No, that’s so weird. He didn’t even stop to ask your names! I don’t know what it is, but something about him’s really strange.”

“Yeah, I agree. Maybe someone at the Academy will know more about him, he did say he’s a bounty hunter after all…”


	10. Chapter 4 — Outlaws, Part 3

The group silently walked into the Adventuring Academy, the sky above them a bright orange as the sun set over Pokéopolis. Practically nothing had been said since capturing Ariados; he, predictably, didn’t want to talk to them, and Decidueye was a rather somber Pokémon. He radiated intensity, intimidating Ethan and the others into not talking. Fennekin especially was uncomfortable with the silence; did she know Decidueye? He seemed to be watching her more than anyone else, including Ariados. Mostly, though, his gaze was straight forward.

As they all walked into the lobby, which was now notably less crowded than Ethan had ever seen it, Roserade looked back from the bounty bulletin board and had a confused look grow on her face. “I see you’ve captured Ariados,” she said before looking to Decidueye. “You’ll have to forgive me, I don’t believe I’ve seen you around before. You are…?”

“Decidueye. Bounty hunter.” He turned around and started walking back towards the door. “Ariados tried to run away after your trainees defeated him, so I stopped him.” He continued walking, and Roserade ran up to him.

“Wait! There is a bounty on Ariados’ head, I’m sure we can come to some agreement to split the reward.”

The door opened again, six small, round Pokémon walking in and going towards Ariados. “No,” Decidueye responded. “I don’t need the bounty, give it to your trainees.” Before she could respond, he caught the door as it was closing and walked out.

“Good day to you, citizens!” one of the round Pokémon proudly proclaimed as they all walked up to and surrounded Ariados. “I am Falinks, the Sheriff of Pokéopolis. These are my Deputies: Falinks, Falinks, Falinks, Falinks, and Falinks. Roserade told us a new trainee had joined, and we were all ecstatic to come and meet you!”

“The Sheriff and his Deputies always work on every case together,” Roserade explained as she walked back to the group. “Sheriff, did you recognize that Pokémon who was leaving as you came in? He said he’s a bounty hunter, but I’ve never seen him here taking or turning in missions.”

“We’ve seen Decidueye before,” Falinks confirmed. “He doesn’t come by the station much; mostly, we see him coming and going from Ninetales’ tower.”

“Ninetales’ tower?” Roserade repeated to herself, raising one of her flowers to her chin. “Fascinating. Regardless, he said that he doesn’t care about the bounty, so that leaves it solely for our trainees. And Gloom and I agreed that Team Stargazers would be allowed to keep the entire bounty.”

“Can do!” Falinks chirped before tossing a bag of what sounded like coins to Ethan. “Your share: 1,000 Poké! Don’t spend it all in one place now, you hear?”

“1,000?” Fennekin echoed. “I thought the bounty was for 2,000?”

“The Exploration Society has a commission on all cash rewards for missions it distributes,” Roserade explained as she took another, similar-sized bag from Falinks. “The Academy additionally has a commission of its own. Without the Society’s commission, we would not be able to fund the infrastructure we have, and without the Academy’s, we could not afford to stay open and continue training the exploration teams of tomorrow. Item rewards are a different story; you may keep anything you earn from those.” As she spoke, all six Falinks surrounded Ariados, escorting him through the lobby and out of the front door of the Academy.

Ethan patted Fennekin gently on the shoulder. “A thousand gold is still a lot more than we had this morning. And if we really want to keep everything we earn, we can always just look for item missions!”

“You also won’t have the Academy commission after you graduate,” she pointed out, “so that is all the more to look forward to!”

Almost immediately, Fennekin perked up. “Yeah, you’re right! When do we graduate, anyways? I don’t think anyone’s ever mentioned it.”

“Not for quite some time, I’m afraid. Graduation occurs when Cinccino, Luxio, and myself all feel that you are experienced and prepared to take on difficult missions and train on your own; if we are all in agreeance, we will meet with you and discuss graduation. Whether or not you have a graduation exam is not set in stone; some trainees have proven themselves more than worthy, while some we felt needed definitive proof that they were ready.”

“We’ll just work hard and try to graduate as soon as we’re able,” Ethan nodded. 

“Miss Roserade!” a young girl exclaimed before Fennekin could respond. A small, black and light blue Pokémon on four legs ran up and hugged Roserade tightly, sending her back a few steps to catch herself from falling. She returned the hug, laughing lightly as she did so.

“Where are your parents?”

“Shinx!” a man called from near the stairs, preceding a long and tall Pokémon with alternating brown and white stripes running to them and scooping Shinx up in his arms. “I’m sorry if she interrupted anything important, Roserade. What do we say when we interrupt people, Shinx?”

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“That’s better.” He looked to Ethan and Fennekin, and a large smile almost instantly grew on his face. “I’m Furret, it’s nice to meet you. Luxio told me they just got two new trainees in.”

“How do you know Luxio?” Ethan asked. “Are you an explorer, too?”

Furret laughed, then started rubbing Shinx’s back. “I stopped being an explorer years ago. I’m her husband! And this is our daughter, Shinx. Can you say hi to the nice explorers, sweetie?”

Shinx twisted around in Furret’s arms, a smile almost as big as her father’s on her face. “Hi!” she waved. “Were you on a mission today? My mommy says I can’t go on missions or become an explorer until I’m older.”

“We fought a bad guy!” Fennekin beamed. “Everyone’s a lot safer, now.”

“Can I fight bad guys, daddy?”

“Not until you’re older, sweetie. Then you can enroll at the Academy and become a famous explorer!”

“I see you’ve met my family,” Luxio said, silently appearing from the stairs and placing a kiss on Furret’s cheek. “You two weren’t being too much of a handful for Roserade now, I hope?”

Laughing, Furret reached out and returned the kiss. “No, just introducing ourselves to the newbies. It was nice meeting you two, but we should probably get home. It’s getting close to someone’s bedtime.”

“I’m not tired!” Shinx protested.

“We’ll see about that,” Luxio muttered so softly that even Ethan could barely make it out. “You three are back in one piece and holding a bag of money, so that tells me all I need to know. Good work; the rest of this week we’ll spend learning fundamentals. Moves, types, items, Pokémon, those sorts of things. Oh, and Roserade’ll probably rank you up. See you all tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Roserade confirmed as Luxio and Furret began walking out of the lobby, “having completed an exploration and a bounty mission, you’ve amassed enough points to rank up to Beginner Rank. There are a few items that come with the rank, so we’ll have them sent to your storage. I still have a few mission complete forms I need to fill out, so I will let you all take off for the night.”

“I’m probably going to go to bed,” Gloom yawned. “That was a hard day. This is why I don’t usually take bounty missions…”

“You did great!” Fennekin responded, jumping onto the stairs. “You really took some hits from Ariados, but you didn’t give up! And those are some really cool moves you know!”

“Any Gloom knows them,” he dismissed, also stepping onto the stairs. Ethan followed right behind, Fennekin continuing trying to compliment Gloom as they ascended the staircase to the second level.

“Fennekin!” he heard Helioptile exclaim as she finished climbing the stairs. “And Ethan! Come on, I want to introduce you to my friends!” Almost as soon as he finished climbing the stairs, his arm was grabbed by Helioptile as she led them to a table, small cardboard box on top, and with two Pokémon sitting at it: a spider-like one with a bubble around its head, and one with a long tan body and large green wings. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Gloom rushing up the stairs. “This is Dewpider and Vibrava; they’re really excited to meet you! Dewpider is kind of new like me, but he’s already really smart and knows a ton about battling! And Vibrava is good at almost everything; if you have any questions, she can totally help out!”

Fennekin took a seat at the table, then waved enthusiastically. “It’s nice to meet you both!”

“Good meeting you,” Ethan said through a sigh as he sat down between Fennekin and Helioptile. “Sorry, long day.”

“You were with Gloom, right?” Dewpider asked.

Before he could answer, Vibrava leaned in close and spoke softly. “Gloom’s a great guy, but adventuring with him can be...tough, as you probably saw. He’s really good at battling, but he thinks he’s really weak. He usually takes a lot of the really easy missions off the bulletin boards because he’s worried about messing up anything that could challenge him.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled, “sometimes it felt like we were in charge of him, and not the other way around.”

“He’s saved me a lot, though,” Helioptile chimed in. “One time we were assigned to a dungeon full of ground types together, and I swear, he knocked out practically every single Pokémon we came across! And then at the end, he apologized for having me take on a Skarmory since his moves would be really weak against it.”

“You should’ve seen the critical hit he got on a Slurpuff that was trying to hit me with its fairy moves!”

Dewpider raised a...leg? Hand? Hand, very slowly. “Um, guys? I hate to be that Pokémon, but can we eat now?”

“Eat?” Fennekin asked.

Helioptile grabbed the cardboard box, then dragged it to the center of the table before opening it. Craning his neck for a better view, Ethan looked and saw six donuts, mostly glazed with different colors, inside the box. Only one looked like the one they had the other day with Helioptile; two had a yellow glaze, one red, one purple, and another blue. “We all found some gummis and paid Alcremie to make us special donuts!” She announced their owners as she passed them out: the two yellow went to her and Ethan, the red to Fennekin, purple to Vibrava, and finally blue to Dewpider. Almost immediately the rest of them started eating; he and Fennekin looked to each other, then shrugged before taking bites of their donuts. 

The one he had the other day was delicious, but the one tonight was somehow even more captivating; the glaze seemed to almost tingle in his mouth, but it was a good sensation. His cheeks went...numb was the wrong word, but they felt much more sensitive than they otherwise were. His heart started to feel more alert, whatever that meant, and the feeling began spreading throughout his body. It was strange for sure, but not bad.

“This is delicious!” Fennekin exclaimed. “I’ve had red gummies before, but this is even better than they are by themselves! Did these come from the café you brought us to the other day?”

Helioptile wiped a bit of glaze off her lower lip as she nodded. “Yup, I told you Alcremie worked really well with glazes!”

“She’s the only one in town who incorporates gummis like this,” Vibrava said. “She’s the best baker in the city if you ask me, and being the closest to the Academy makes it that much nicer! She’ll also make any type of glaze so long as you supply the gummi, which is what we did. I usually just keep any gummis I find and bring them to her instead of eating them normally. Helioptile, on the other hand…”

“Hey! I saved two yellow gummis for these donuts, didn’t I?”

“Didn’t Vibrava make you?” Dewpider asked. 

She scoffed. “I was gonna do it anyways, you know. Vibrava said that after I already planned to.”

“You didn’t even have any gummis when I told you to save them!”

“Well I was gonna get some!” She sighed, then looked at Fennekin. “Sorry for having that come from your question...we’ve just got a weird friendship.”

A big smile started spreading across Fennekin’s face, and it looked like she was actively working to keep it from growing larger. “No, it’s fine. Were you guys all friends before you joined, or did you meet here?”

“We all met through the Academy,” Dewpider answered. “Vibrava helped me out on my first mission, and she introduced me to Helioptile.”

“And Helioptile and I joined around the same time,” Vibrava continued, “so we went on a lot of missions together at the start. We’re both taking on a lot of solo missions now, but we still try to adventure together when we can!”

“Feel free to ask us if you need help, by the way,” Dewpider interjected. “No promises we’ll be free, but we can try to do what we can.”

“Really? You’d do that for us?”

“Of course!” Helioptile beamed. “It’s what friends are for, right?”

The smile on Fennekin’s face was no longer contained. “Yeah...I guess it is.”


End file.
